


And the Vision of Truth Job

by exclamation



Category: Leverage, The Librarians (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Twins, Eliot Spencer and Jacob "Jake" Stone are Twins, Magic, Magic Potion, Misunderstandings, Other, Secrets, Twins
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-18
Updated: 2020-04-08
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:54:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 27,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22305241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/exclamation/pseuds/exclamation
Summary: While on a mission for the Library, Jacob Stone drinks a magic potion and learns that his supposedly dead brother is very much alive and running a brewpub in Portland. But there's something very strange going on with this brewpub, stories about how people who've been wronged can come to this place to get justice in strange and dramatic ways. Jacob suspects there's something magical going on and wants to save his brother from its potential consequences.
Relationships: Alec Hardison/Parker, Alec Hardison/Parker/Eliot Spencer, Eve Baird/Flynn Carsen
Comments: 166
Kudos: 516





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I have tripped and fallen into a new fandom. Binging The Librarians after watching Leverage, all I could see was Jacob and Eliot as brothers and soon the headcanons were overflowing onto my keyboard. 
> 
> I don't know exactly where this story is going so I warn you that it might fizzle out after a few chapters.

Jacob read the wall above the cup one last time, translating the warning to the rest of the team. “Whatever it shows will be painful and personal but it will be true. The point of the vision isn’t to trick anyone, it’s to show something real that the drinker might otherwise never learn. This section here,” he gestured at the carved inscriptions, “talks about casting out the shadows of secrets with the light of truth, but it talks about cleansing fire.”

“The cleansing part doesn’t sound too bad,” said Cassandra. 

“It’s more the fire part I’m focused on,” said Ezekiel. 

But Jacob thought Cassandra had the right of it. Whatever the potion showed would be painful, the inscription was perfectly clear about that, but there was something about the phrasing that seemed to imply it was a good sort of painful. It would reveal a truth that would hurt but leave the drinker better off in the end, like someone discovering their partner was cheating on them. The revelation would be painful but it would be better than continuing to be deceived. 

“I’ll drink it,” he said. 

“You’re sure?” asked Eve. 

“Yeah. I mean, we defeated a trickster spirit by acknowledging truth and I said I’d stop hiding from myself. I’ll do it.” 

“Well, if you’re sure mate,” said Ezekiel. He patted him on the shoulder. “Rather you than me.” 

“Just be ready to grab the artefact. I don’t know how long this will last.” 

“I’ll stay with Jacob,” Cassandra said. “You two go for the artefact.” 

The way to the artefact was opened by the truth. It would stay open only so long as Jacob was caught up in the vision the potion offered. He picked up the cup and glanced at the others. They were ready. He took a breath to brace himself for fire and drank. The potion tasted like beer, but subtly different from any brand he knew. There was a richer taste to it, layered with details he couldn’t quite identify. It was surprisingly nice. Why couldn’t Jenkins make potions taste like this? 

He got to the bottom of the cup and set it down on the pedestal again. 

“Are you alright?” Cassandra asked. 

Eve was more practical, asking, “Why isn’t the way opening?” 

Then the world shifted out of focus, the text on the wall blurring, his friends’ faces swimming. He heard the grinding of stone moving over stone but the shifting of the wall was less important than the fact the whole world was now wavering. He was aware of Cassandra’s hands on him and the hard floor hitting his back, and then the physical sensations slipped away and it was like he was floating, no physical sensations, no body. Just existence. 

The blurs around him resolved and he saw a face in front of him, a face he saw every day in the mirror, but this face was framed with hair that hung down past his cheeks. He was sat at a table with a black guy but the room around him was blurred still, hazy and muted. The room didn’t matter. These two men and this conversation was what mattered, what Jacob needed to see. 

Jacob looked at the face that was identical to his own and a mix of grief and anger surged through him, because Eliot wouldn’t have looked like that, not Eliot as he knew him. Eliot had died at eighteen while the man here looked about the same age as Jacob. But the potion couldn’t lie. If this was the truth, it meant that Eliot was still alive. He was still alive and he’d let them think he was dead. The hurt burned through him with the promised fire as Jacob realised what this meant. What it meant his brother had done. 

“You can’t put ‘family-run’ on the menu, Hardison,” Eliot was saying, and Jacob knew it was Eliot. Maybe that was something in the potion, driving home the truth of the situation, refusing to let him hide from the idea or try to come up with excuses or explanations beyond the obvious. 

“Why not?” the black guy, Hardison asked. “We’re a family: you, me, Parker. A little unconventional maybe, but still a family.” 

“Not in a way a random person looking at the menu will understand.” 

“Yeah, but it will look good on the marketing materials and who cares if the people reading it don’t understand it the same way we do?” 

“I care! You can’t put family-run on the menu.” Eliot glared at Hardison like he was willing to murder the man over it. 

“What’s this really about? It’s not like you to care how we advertise the brewpub.” 

“I don’t want to be reminded about my family every time I look at the menu!” Eliot snapped. He took a breath and looked away. He took another breath. 

“Look, man,” said Hardison. “I know you and your dad didn’t have a great relationship…” 

“This isn’t about my dad.” Eliot took another breath. He had the look of someone bracing themselves to do something they knew would be painful. “It’s about my brother.” 

“Your… what? You don’t have… How didn’t I know you have a brother?” 

“He thinks I’m dead.” 

Jacob felt the weight of that silence. Hardison let the silence hang there, didn’t push for details. He waited to see what else Eliot would say. Jacob dragged his attention away from his brother’s face to look at the draft of the menu, the logo burning itself into his memory. It was clear and vivid in a way the table beneath it wasn’t, as though the vision wanted him to notice this, wanted him to remember this. The logo of the place where he could find his brother. 

“When I was captured the first time,” Eliot said, “there was such a mess of bodies left behind that it was assumed there were no survivors. My dad was sent a notice that I was killed in action. No one was coming to rescue me. The things I did to get out… I made a lot of dangerous people very angry. They wouldn’t have hesitated to hurt my family to get to me.” 

“So you stayed away to protect them,” Hardison said. Jacob felt a rush of anger that Eliot would do something like that, wouldn’t even give him a choice to know the truth. If he had a physical body in that moment, he might have punched him. 

Eliot started to nod, but then shook his head. “That was the excuse I gave myself.” 

“Then why didn’t you go back?” 

There was another long, heavy silence. The room seemed to fade further, disappearing, until the two men were floating a void. They were all that mattered, these two men and the truth being laid out between them. 

“I did things to survive in there, I did things to get away, things that I don’t like to think about. I wasn’t the naïve kid who signed up for service thinking he was serving his country. I didn’t want my brother to look at me and see the monster I saw when I looked in the mirror.” 

The anger melted away and Jacob longed to reach out, to lay a hand on his brother’s shoulder, to tell him that it would be alright. He had never imagined he could see such pain on Eliot’s face. Eliot had always been the strong one, the fighter, the one who had never been scared to stand up to Dad, but in that moment he looked broken. It shocked Jacob to the core. He couldn’t imagine what might have happened to make his brother look so hurt. He couldn't dream of what would make his kind brother think of himself as a monster. 

It was Hardison who reached out, putting a hand on Eliot's arm, a touch Eliot didn't even seem to notice. 

"Things are different now though," Hardison said. "The person you are now, the good that you do, surely your brother would be proud of you now. Why don't you try to find him again?" 

"Helping people now doesn't undo all the hurting I did. Besides, it's not like we go about helping in a way most people would understand. No, it's better this way. He buried his brother a long time ago. He's mourned and moved on. He doesn't need to know the truth of how I spent the years after he got that message. No. It's best for everyone if Eliot Stone stays dead." 

The last thing Jacob saw was the expression on his brother's face, the determination laced with grief, as though he were the one in mourning. Jacob thought his heart was breaking from the sight of it. 

"Stone?" The voice drifted through the darkness, faint but getting clearer with every moment. "Stone, can you hear me? Are you alright?" 

He knew that voice. Eve Baird. At the thought of the name his awareness grew of the cold beneath his back, of the awkward angle of his neck because his head was resting somewhere warm. Someone's lap? He noticed the dull ache of bruising from where he'd fallen. And the chill of air moving over the tear tracks on his face. 

He blinked and brought his hand to his eyes, wiping away the water and letting his friends' faced swim back into focus. 

"Stone?" Eve asked again. 

"I'm okay," he said. 

"You were out a lot longer than we expected." 

"It's over now. Did you get the artefact?" 

“Yeah, we have it.” 

“Let’s get out of here then.” 

He pushed himself upright. There was nothing wrong with his body, nothing to stop himself getting to his feet. He wasn't the one who had been captured in a war zone and put through whatever physical and psychological torment led someone like Eliot to look so damaged. Still, he wobbled a bit on his way upright and both Cassandra and Eve steadied him. 

“What did you see?” Cassandra asked. Jacob wasn’t prepared to answer that, wasn’t done processing the revelation. 

Thankfully he was saved from having to answer by Jones. “With the way he was crying he was probably forced to hear all his ex girlfriends complaining about how terrible he was in bed.”

Jacob gave him a grateful smile but shot back with, “I had to hear all your exes saying how you were. It was traumatising.” 

"Only because they were so full of praise you know you'll never compete." 

No one asked again about his real vision on the walk back to the door. Jacob was glad of that because he wasn't sure how he could explain what he'd seen. The knowledge that had been revealed was so enormous he felt like he'd barely wrapped his head around the concept. His dead brother was alive. He'd been through some unknown hell and now worked in a restaurant of some sort. And he thought Jacob was better off believing him dead. 

Jacob knew that Eliot was wrong about that. The vision had been as painful as promised, but Jacob was glad he'd seen it. He would rather know the truth about his brother's lies. He just wasn't sure what he should do now that he knew.


	2. Chapter 2

Jacob wasn’t procrastinating. He was processing. He’d discovered something significant and it took time to adjust to the idea. It was perfectly reasonable to stop and consider what he’d learned before he rushed into action. Besides, he needed to plan, because he couldn’t just show up on his brother’s doorstep and announce his presence. Especially since he couldn’t explain how he knew that Eliot was alive without revealing magic and the Library.

He needed to know what he was walking into. Strategic research was a perfectly valid next step and definitely didn’t mean he was scared to see his brother again. Because there was no way Eliot was right about Jacob rejecting him. Eliot had done something so terrible that he thought Jacob would consider him a monster, but there was no way that was possible, so Jacob had absolutely no reason to avoid finding out what it was. Jacob was just being sensible and investigating prior to rushing into an unknown situation. 

The more he researched, the happier he was that he had taken the time for research. 

He found the brewpub easily enough based on the name and logo he’d seen on the menu in the vision. They had a nice website with photos of the dining room, descriptions of the homebrewed beers, and an electronic version of the menu, along with a note to “Ask management about our Just Desserts specials!”. 

All in all, the website looked perfectly normal, until he got to the customer reviews section. 

There were a lot of great reviews, with people talking about the quality of food and beer, and how good it was for the price. Three different reviews described the food as ‘magical’ and another two as ‘miraculous’. Those could easily have been innocuous praise, but they sent up flags in Jacob’s mind and sent him looking into other reviews, browsing Yelp and Google and TripAdvisor to see what people were saying about the establishment. 

The lowest rating he saw was four stars, which was odd but not extraordinary. The fact that the five star ratings massively outnumbered the four star ones was just a sign that it was a well-run establishment. That wasn’t what Jacob noticed. He wasn’t even that worried about the reviews remarking that, “The chilli was so good I had a religious experience.” 

What he noticed were the reviews that said things like, “This restaurant is my lucky charm. Every time I go there, something good happens.” Or, “I think the staff here have a direct line to karma. My cheating ex dumped me by text while I was waiting here for him to show up for date night. I ranted about him to one of the bartenders and by the time I got home, he’d accidentally shared half his messaging history with his mom, including three conversations with different women where he sent them dick pics and then insulted them when they didn't respond." 

Jacob went and did a bit more searching based on these reviews and found a web forum that was specifically dedicated to the weird stories people had about the brew pub. There was a definite trend, with people talking about weird luck or strange karma against people who'd wronged them. 

One person wrote that they used to go in once a month when they were struggling for money and working long hours. "It was the highlight of my month, the one treat I allowed myself. One time I was there, I turned down dessert because I wanted to make sure I had enough money to leave a good tip and the chef came out of the kitchen with some experimental pie that he was trying out. He said he wanted a taste tester for it so I got a free slice of apple caramel pie (if it's on the menu, buy it - I have never tasted anything so delicious in my life) but then when I left, I found sixty bucks in my coat pocket that I swear hadn't been there before." 

There were several responses where people said that they'd similarly found money after visiting the restaurant. "I only go when my bank account is really empty," one reviewer wrote, "because I don't want whatever good luck spirits live there to think I'm cheating the system, but I swear every time I go, I leave with more money than I went in with. There's always money in my wallet or pockets that wasn't there when I walked in." 

Someone said that they were reverse-pick-pocketed and found two grand in hundred dollar bills in their purse. They'd tried to talk to the staff but one of the owners had just said that if the money was in their purse, it must have been theirs so they should keep it. 

The reference to good luck spirits wasn't limited to one post. Others agreed that there was something strange going on but it went far beyond getting money unexpectedly. 

"I lost my job after I complained about my manager cutting corners with safety and I stopped by for a drink to drown my sorrows on the way home. This slightly weird woman came up to me and asked me what was wrong so I told her. Two days later, my former manager was caught violating safety protocols and actually breaking the law by putting workers at risk. He was fined and fired and the company hired me back to do his job at much higher pay than I'd been on before. I can't see how it could have been that woman at the bar who made it happen but it was weird how quickly it happened after I went there." 

"I got a voucher for a free meal there in my inbox," someone else wrote, "about a week after I lost my savings to this scam investor. I figured I might as well use it because there wasn't a chance I'd be able to afford to eat out any time soon otherwise. These two guys came up to me and asked me about the investor. A week later, the investor had been arrested and was looking at getting a few extra years in prison for punching an FBI agent on top of the fraud, and I got all my savings back and then some in a settlement case. I don't know how they could have made it happen, but I'm sure it was those guys at the restaurant." 

There were several stories like that. Someone was conned or tricked or treated unfairly in some way and they went to the restaurant where they told someone their story. Within a few days or weeks, whoever had wronged them was punished or arrested and the person writing the post had gained back all they had lost or more. Most of the time it was money, but there was an aspiring writer whose story was stolen because the fine print of a competition stated that the organisers got to keep all the intellectual property, and a scientist whose research had been stolen by their boss, as well as several others who lost jobs or had property taken only to end up better off following their visit to the brew pub. 

Jacob couldn't help wondering how these miraculous feats of justice were carried out, but they weren't necessarily magical in origin. One of the stories posited a different theory. 

"I think the people who own the place are in the mafia or something. I got my first job there when I was trying to get away from home and get a place of my own. The pay was better than most other entry level work and the tips were ridiculous. Someone kept sticking hundred dollar bills in the tip jar. That has to be a money laundering scheme or something because who tips a hundred over a burger and a couple of beers? Anyway, the guy who runs the kitchen is terrifying. Scariest man I've ever known in my whole life, but one day he noticed I had bruises on my arms and he asked me about them. Of course, I told him because the guy could probably gut me with a teaspoon. All he said was 'I'll have a word with him' and my dad never laid a hand on me since, wouldn't even look at me for about a week. I think Chef Scary Guy threatened my dad into leaving me alone. About a week later, I got a letter saying I had a full scholarship to a culinary institute on the other side of the state, with enough money to cover accommodation and everything. I never even applied to that place! I'm pretty sure Chef pulled strings to get me a place there. He's still the scariest guy I ever met, even more now that he pulled all that off, but he looks after his staff." 

Not all of the stories were good though, and some definitely speculated in the supernatural. 

"I'm afraid to say anything in there that I don't know is one hundred percent true," one person wrote. "Yeah, those guys can work magic and get you justice if you're wronged, but if you're the one in the wrong, don't mess with them. I was there once and this guy came in talking about how he and his wife were getting a divorce and that his wife was making up stories to try and get half of his property. He said all he wanted was to get what was his, since he came into the marriage with more money and earned more with his job. A week later, I saw a news story that he'd been arrested. The police had somehow got a tape of him confessing that he hit his wife. I was curious, so I looked into it and it turned out he'd been beating his wife. She ended up getting everything in the divorce and he went to prison. He also ended up with the word 'liar' tattooed on his forehead and I can't for the life of me figure out how that happened. There's definitely some creepy, voodoo shit going on. If you go into that place and ask for help, you get exactly what you deserve, good or bad. It does scare me but I keep going back because the chilli is just too good to stay away from." 

Jacob read all these stories and couldn't help thinking about a piece of the conversation he'd overheard in his vision. Eliot had said they helped people but he'd said they did it unconventionally. Maybe there was some wild explanation for how he pulled off all the schemes described by all these people, but it was possible that there was magic involved. 

Some artefact might be dealing out mystical justice to those who sought it. 

On the surface that didn't seem too bad, if people only got what they deserved, but everyone did bad things from time to time and magic could be indiscriminate. And if Eliot was using magic to hurt people, even in righteous punishment, there was always the danger of a backlash. 

Jacob's job was to keep magic out of the hands of people who didn't know enough about it. He strongly suspected Eliot was one of them. It was possible that the vision hadn't just been meant to guide him to his brother after all these years. It was possible that the vision was sent to help Jacob save him.


	3. Chapter 3

Jacob still hadn’t worked out what he was going to say to Eliot, but it would depend on how much Eliot knew about the world of magic and how deeply he was embroiled in it. If Jacob’s suspicions were true about Eliot using a magical artefact to bring justice to the unfortunate souls who wandered into the brewpub then he might be open to an explanation involving magical truth visions and the dangers of uncontrolled magic. On the other hand, it was entirely possible that Eliot didn’t know exactly what he’d found and he might dismiss Jacob as insane.

Jacob needed to know what he was walking into, which meant he needed to investigate. He felt on firmer footing with this. Investigating potential magical threats was part of his job as a Librarian and if this put off the moment when he had to face his brother a little longer, that was just a by-product. 

He checked the opening hours of the brewpub and picked a time that it was sure to be shut and that would give the last shift enough time to deal with lingering customers and finish up whatever clean-up tasks were involved, with a generous margin for them to realise they’d forgotten something important and come back for it. The end result was Jacob approaching the brew pub at about three in the morning. 

He made his way round the back so he wouldn’t be noticed by anyone going down the main street. The brewpub had a side door in an alley, tucked behind the bins, so he would be nicely out of sight as he pulled out the lock picks that had been part of his last Christmas present from Jones. The other part of the present had been lessons in using them, since Jones felt that everyone needed to know how to break into buildings. 

Jacob would admit it came in handy. 

It took him longer than he would admit to Jones to get the locking mechanism to click open, but then he was inside. He listened out for any beeping that would indicate an alarm system but didn’t notice anything. A brewpub wasn’t exactly a prime target for thieves, but it still seemed a little sloppy. 

Jacob inched inside, still looking for anything that might be a security system in case he needed to run. When nothing obviously blinked or beeped at him, he risked creeping inside a little further. As he moved through the kitchen full of fancy appliances, he pulled out the magical detector doodad that Cassandra and Jenkins had built, eyes searching the darkness for anything that looked like it didn’t belong among the shining counters and sleek ovens. 

“You picked the wrong place to rob, buddy,” a voice said as a light snapped on, dazzling Jacob. He managed to tuck the magic detector away and was about to explain that he wasn’t here to rob the place when the voice softened and said, “Eliot? What the hell are you doing tripping the perimeter alarm?” 

Jacob blinked his eyes into working again and could make out the black guy from his vision standing in the doorway to the kitchen. So there had been a security system, just not an obvious one. 

“Sorry,” Jacob said, since it seemed as good a place as any to start. 

“Are we being robbed?” a new voice asked, making Jacob jump as a blond woman appeared from the ceiling and dropped into the kitchen. 

“No,” said the black guy, Hardison, “it was just Eliot sneaking out for a midnight haircut. Looks good, by the way.” 

“Oh,” said the blond. “I didn’t notice. I liked it longer.” 

“Parker,” said Hardison, “quick lesson in human social niceties. When someone makes a drastic change to their appearance, they expect you to notice and the polite thing to do is to find something nice to say about it.” 

The blond, Parker, frowned at this, but nodded. “I guess it won’t get in your face when you have to fight people.” 

She looked at Hardison for confirmation and Hardison gave her a grin and a thumbs up. 

“Thanks, Parker,” Jacob said. He had already latched onto the comment about human social niceties. If she was something non-human learning to pass as human, that was more worrying by far than the potential artefact he’d been concerned about. 

At least she didn’t seem threatening as far as non-humans went. She grinned back at Hardison and said, “Do I get a cookie?” 

“It’s three in the morning, Parker.” 

“But I did socialisation right. I should get a cookie. Right?” The last part was addressed towards Jacob. 

“Sure, you can have a cookie,” he said. He’d rather keep her happy until he figured out exactly what she was. 

“Yay!” she said. She latched onto his arm and pulled him towards the door. Hardison stepped aside to let them pass. 

“I’ll be right behind you,” he said, “I just want to reset the alarms.” 

Parker led him along a short corridor and to a flight of stairs behind a door that unlocked with a heavy-duty keypad. They only made it a few steps up before there was a yell from behind them. 

“Parker, that’s not Eliot!” 

Parker let go of his arm in an instant, jumping away and up so that she was above him on the stairs, just as Hardison skidded into view in the doorway below. Jacob was blocked from both sides. A moment later, another man stepped into view behind Hardison. Eliot stared at Jacob. Jacob stared back. 

He hadn’t been ready for this moment. He’d thought he’d have more time to work out what to say. He swallowed around the sudden dryness in his mouth. It really was Eliot. He hadn’t doubted the vision, not really, but it was still different to see him with real eyes. 

“Hi, Eliot,” Jacob said. 

“Two Eliots,” said Parker. “Why are there two Eliots? Is one of them evil, robot Eliot? Or did you find the time machine and come back from the future to tell us?” 

Eliot didn’t seem to hear her. He was looking at Jacob, face pale like he was the one seeing a ghost. 

“Jake.” 

Hardison looked between the two of them. “I take it this is your secret brother? You didn’t mention he was your twin.” 

Eliot ignored him too. “What are you doing here?” 

“Well, my plan was to do a bit of snooping around the place where someone identical to me was supposed to work, so I could figure out what was going on. I wasn’t expecting you to actually live here.” 

“But how did you find me?” 

“I got a job in Portland a while back. I’m surprised it took me this long to be told there was someone here that looked exactly like me.” It wasn’t exactly a lie but Jacob didn’t want to open with the truth until he had more information, especially more information about who or what Parker was. 

Eliot didn’t seem to know what to say to that. Jacob could understand that feeling. 

“Let’s go upstairs,” Hardison said. “There’s no point having this conversation in the stairway.” 

“But how do we know he’s not an evil clone?” Parker asked. 

“He’s my brother, Parker.” 

She didn’t look happy about it, but she let him upstairs. Jacob followed her into a large apartment that seemed to combine several rooms into one. A desk was positioned facing a large screen in one corner, while another held comfortable armchairs and couches around yet another large screen. A dining table held another corner. There were a few bits of clutter scattered about, like loose papers, a well-thumbed book, and a jacket flung over the back of one chair. This was clearly a lived-in space. 

Jacob finished his survey and looked back at his brother. 

“It’s good to see you, Eliot,” Jacob said. Then he swung a punch. 

He expected Eliot to block or move aside or something. Instead, he just stood there as Jacob’s punch connected with the side of his face. His only reaction was to turn his head a little, deflecting some of the force of the blow and probably stopping Jacob shattering his knuckles as much as reducing the pain of impact for him. 

“You could have told me you were alive!” Jacob snapped. He shook his hand. He should have gone for the solar plexus, it would have hurt Eliot more and him less, but the drama of the gesture was as important as the pain. 

“It wasn’t that simple,” Eliot said. 

“I get not wanting to come home after everything Dad said, but nothing? No phone call. Not even a Christmas card. I thought you were dead and you let me think that!” 

He’d seen the vision, seen how hurt Eliot was, but facing him now, all the initial anger came bubbling back to the surface. His brother had abandoned him, had left him behind when he’d gone off to war, and that he’d been able to cope with. But leaving him behind and grieving, trying to be the perfect son to make up for the one who was never coming home, that was different. 

“There were a lot of dangerous people who would have hurt you to get to me.” 

“That’s a bullshit excuse and you know it. You could have let me know you were alive without anyone else needing to know. You could have told me.” Jacob’s voice caught on the last sentence and he realised he was crying. He didn’t want these strangers seeing him cry so he looked away, wiping his face and taking a moment to collect himself before he looked back at Eliot. 

“I’m sorry.” 

“Ten years, Eliot. That’s a hell of a long time and not once did you think to maybe let me know you weren’t dead?” 

“I did think about it. I thought about it a lot. I even…” Eliot’s voice sounded rough too, but he was doing a better job at keeping himself in control. “I looked up your address in Oklahoma. Flew out there, rented a truck and got a six pack of beer. I have no idea what I was going to say but I got as far as your doorstep but no one was home. It looked like no one had been home in days. I figured you were out on the pipeline so I just… came back here.” Eliot cleared his throat a little. “I never found the courage to try again. It took all my strength to show up that first time and I couldn’t do it and be disappointed again.” 

“When was this?” 

“Seven or eight months ago.” 

After Jacob had joined the library. He’d barely been back to that house since and, after Flynn had recovered the main library, he’d stopped living there altogether in anything but an official capacity. Every now and then he’d go back to check the mail and pay the bills, but the library had plenty of rooms and it was easier to just to sleep there. No wonder he hadn’t been home when Eliot had come to visit. 

“I’m not going to retract the punch,” he said. “It was still about ten years late.” 

Eliot rubbed at his jaw. “That was more effective than it used to be. You been getting some training?” 

While Jacob had always been content with bar fights, Eliot had been the one who took boxing seriously, who used it as a way to vent the stress of their home life. He’d given Jacob a few tips over the years, but the real training had come later, from Baird and the Monkey King and from the reality of having to fight for his life instead of just for fun. 

“It’s been ten years. I’ve picked up a few things.” 

Eliot nodded. He did look guilty about all this, so that was something. 

In silence that hung in the air between them, Parker looked pointedly at Hardison and then, when he didn’t seem to take the point, elbowed him in the side. When that didn’t prompt him to do anything either, she stepped forward, not quite getting between Eliot and Jacob but making sure they couldn’t help but notice her. 

“Hi, I’m Parker.” 

“Jacob Stone.” 

“Alec Hardison.” Hardison stepped forward and offered a hand for him to shake, which Jacob accepted.

This seemed to jolt Eliot back into speech. “You said you were here with a job. You still in the pipeline business?” 

“No. Took me a while but I managed to escape in the end. I’m a librarian.” 

“Wow. Dad must be thrilled.” 

“Last time I was home, he took the opportunity to mock my life choices, belittle my intelligence, and call me a traitor for leaving the business, while implying I’d somehow managed to ruin his finances by telepathy or something while I wasn’t even in the state.” 

Eliot nodded. “Sounds about right. You enjoy it?” 

“Yeah, I do. I get to travel more than I expected acquiring rare books and artefacts for the Library’s collection and I write papers on art history and architecture in the quieter moments.” There was a part of Jacob that half-expected Eliot to mock him for his description of the job. His Dad’s opinions had a way of worming their way into the back of his mind and a part of him couldn’t help worrying that Eliot would share them, that he would agree with Dad that he was wasting his life. 

He should have known better. Eliot smiled at him and said, “Sounds nice. You get to use your brain instead of just your brawn.” 

“What about you? How did you end up a cook in a brewpub?” 

"That was Hardison's fault." 

"What do you mean 'fault'?" Hardison demanded. “You say it like I did something terrible. I found us a perfect place where we can each have our own areas and where you can indulge in your passion. I gave you a state-of-the-art kitchen with all the gizmos you could ever want – half of which you never use.”

“Because serving people vaporised food is a ridiculous gimmick.” 

Hardison carried on as though Eliot hadn’t said anything. “And all you do is complain.” 

“You moved us across the country without even asking our opinions first.” 

Hardison responded by talking about how his hard work and careful planning was never appreciated, while Eliot threw in a few disagreements in between. Jacob wondered if he ought to say something to stop this argument blowing up further, but Parker sidled round to him, standing a little closer than was comfortable, and said quietly, “They’re only pretend arguing.” 

“What?” 

“Sophie explained it to me. They pretend argue. They don’t real argue. Eliot has to act like this is all an inconvenience for him and he’s only doing it as a favour to Hardison because he gets uncomfortable when people do things for him. This lets him accept the gift without feeling uncomfortable about it. It’s like how he doesn’t like to need anyone, so he pretends he’s only with us because we need him. Sophie says it’s part of his emotional armour.” 

“And who’s Sophie?” 

“A friend of ours. She and Nate used to work with us but now they’re travelling round the world trying to find the perfect wedding venue. It’s taking them a while because Sophie’s going to need two weddings.” 

“Why?” 

“She wants to have a big affair with a fancy party and cake and loads of people but she also wants to get married using her real name and it’s not safe for people to know her true name, so she’ll have to have the fancy party wedding using a false name and then a private wedding for just us when she can use her real name.” 

Jacob was aware of a lot of lore surrounding the concept of true names. There were a lot of supernatural creatures who could be controlled in some way if someone knew their true name. This was just another pointed towards the idea of something magical going on, but it was strange that this woman, or whatever she was, would talk so openly about it. Unless not understanding human norms around names was another thing she had to learn. Jacob didn’t press for more details. There would be time for those questions later, when he felt he had a better handle of what was going on with his brother and for now he might learn more by not giving away that he suspected anything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The reason Eliot came in from downstairs is because when the alarm went off that someone was breaking in, he immediately went out a back way to make sure that the building wasn't surrounded and catch whoever was breaking in off-guard.


	4. Chapter 4

After a while, Haridson and Eliot stopped bickering and Hardison announced that they ought to get back to bed. By they, he clearly meant himself and Parker. She didn't seem inclined to follow that suggestion, seemingly missing the subtext that was intended for her, but Hardison put a hand on her arm and said quietly, "This is a big thing for Eliot. We should give them a bit of privacy." 

Once the suggestion had been clarified, she was perfectly happy to go along with it. She bid them a cheery goodnight and then headed elsewhere in the big apartment. Jacob and Eliot were left standing alone, with no buffer now between them. 

"So the three of you all live and work together?" Jacob said, filling the silence more than anything else. "That must get awkward if you ever have a falling out." 

"We each have our own space. I'll hand it to Hardison that it was a good idea for us each to get our own bedroom and private areas. We can shut each other out if we need alone time." 

Jacob hadn't thought about them sharing bedrooms until Eliot brought it up, but the fact that it was worth him calling out implied that bedroom sharing would have been an option. Jacob wasn't sure how the logistics of that would work. 

"Are you... dating both of them or something?" 

"No. Maybe. Or something." Eliot turned away, moving towards the kitchen area. Jacob wasn't sure if it was because Eliot really wanted something from there or if he simply wanted to avoid making eye contact. "Parker and Hardison are together. I'm... They're important to me. I don't know if there's a good word for what I am with them, what they are to me." 

"I'll have to try and find one for you." 

"You always were better with words than me." Eliot opened the fridge and reached behind an astonishing amount of orange soda, coming back with two beers. "I don't know if it's too late or too early for this, but I think I need it." 

He held a bottle out towards Jacob, who hesitated. He wasn't opposed to drinking, but something in that phrasing made him concerned. Liking a drink was very different from needing a drink. 

"You're not... following in Dad's footsteps are you?" Jacob asked. 

Eliot snorted and shook his head. "Not a chance. I've seen enough reminders over the last few years of why I want to keep my drinking reasonable." 

Jacob took the offered bottle. "What do you mean by that?" 

"A friend of ours, Nate, he... fell into the bottom of a bottle over some family troubles. Spent the next few years pickling himself in alcohol. He tried going sober for a while but when he fell off the wagon, he fell hard. Messed up his judgement, interfered with his work, nearly cost him his relationship with the only woman on the planet capable of putting up with his bullshit. He wasn't like Dad, didn't lash out at other people. The only person he was destroying was himself, but it wasn't pretty to watch at times." 

"He doing better now?" 

"Better, yes. Not good but better. But my point is that I've seen enough warning signs in other people to steer clear of them in myself." 

Jacob nodded. 

He drank a mouthful of the beer and followed Eliot over to the couch. They sat together, not making eye contact, while the silence fell awkwardly over them again. 

"How long have you been in Portland?" Jacob asked. 

"A little over a year and a half. We were in Boston for a while before then." 

"You been together long?" 

"Working together five, six years," Eliot answered. "It was the three of us plus Nate, the guy I was talking about, and Sophie." 

"Parker mentioned her. Something about looking for wedding venues." 

"Yeah, she and Nate finally got themselves sorted out enough that he could propose and she could say yes. They headed off on their world tour, so it's just the three of us now. But if you meant how long have the three of us been like this? That's tough to say. I can say when Parker and Hardison got together officially but that was building for a while before then and when it comes to the three of us as whatever the hell we are together, that's tougher to pinpoint." 

Jacob nodded. He decided not to push too much on the personal relationship side of things because it was clear this wasn't a simple thing for Eliot to answer. "You said you were working together years before you came here. Was that at another restaurant?" 

Eliot gave a little laugh and shook his head. "No. God, how do I explain our real work? We help people." 

"That's kinda vague." 

"Right. There are people in this world who have all the money and the power. CEOs of mega-corporations and billionaires and other assholes with more money than they have human decency. They screw over the little guy and we try to put things right." 

Eliot was still being vague. Jacob had half hoped that Eliot would have some straight-forward, non-magical explanation for the stories behind this place, but this was worrying. Eliot wasn't quite making eye contact as he avoided specifics, skirting around something he didn't want to state too clearly. Jacob decided to press harder, to try and get something more conclusive out of his brother. 

"You mean... filing class action lawsuits or something?" 

"More of the or something. Look, it's complicated and way too late to go into the details. I want to hear about you. Working for a library? What's that like? Do you do story time for little kids and help people find books when all they can remember is that the cover was blue?" 

Jacob accepted the change in subject because he didn't want to start a fight within an hour of seeing Eliot again, but he filed the evasion away in the back of his mind. Eliot was definitely keeping secrets from him and that was worrying. But Jacob had secrets of his own to keep. He wasn't ready to reveal the truth of the Library until he had a better handle on what was going on here. 

"Nothing like that," he said. "It's actually a private library with the most amazing collection of artefacts and rare books. Half of my job is finding new stuff, well new very old stuff, to add to the collection, but the rest of the time I get to read the books and study the artefacts and write academic papers on it all." 

"My brother the academic. Does this mean you managed to get to college despite Dad?" 

"Not exactly. I managed to skip the who 'going to college and getting a degree' part and jump straight to having a doctorate." 

"How the hell does that work?" 

"Honorary degrees. Universities and institutions granted me honorary doctorates for my contributions to the fields of archaeology, anthropology, history, and art. I wrote papers under pseudonyms while I was back home and all of the pseudonyms were separately issued degrees without me ever stepping foot on a college campus." It was an achievement and one he could be proud of, since there was no question of nepotism or being honoured through connections. All of those degrees had come through hard work and merit. But at the same time he did wonder if he'd missed out. He'd never had the college life that was supposed to be part of the experience. 

"That's impressive, man," Eliot said. Then after a moment, he asked, "Does that mean you can be Dr Stone if your alter-egos were the ones that got the degrees?" 

"Yes, because I was using pseudonyms not faked identities. I put a lot of work into separating the various identities and giving them their own styles and subjects of expertise so they built up separate reputations, but they were all tied back to me. Legally the work is mine, it was just the name they were printed under that was different, in the same way that Charles Dodgson and Lewis Carroll were the same person. So the degrees offered to the names I used were still degrees given to me." 

"Dr Stone. How about that. Good for you." There wasn't a trace of sarcasm in the tone, just genuine pride. Jacob hadn't known how much he'd needed to hear that. He'd known that his dad would never be proud of him but he was thrilled to bits that someone was. 

"What about you? Did you get to college after your service?" 

"It didn't work out that way in the end. I don't mind. I know my capabilities and it can serve me well if other people underestimate my intelligence." 

"It serves you well as a cook?" 

"No. In the other work. If people think they can take advantage of me, I can use that against them." Eliot quickly turned the conversation away from this mysterious other work, asking, "What about romance? Any significant other in your life?" 

"Nothing significant. There have been a few flirtations over the last few years but nothing that's lasted long than a week or so. My most significant relationship at the moment is with my friends from work but I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything because that friendship is really strong." 

"I get that." 

Given Eliot's strange relationship with his two coworkers, Jacob supposed he did. 

They talked a little more about Portland, about the brewpub. Jacob shared a few of the less magical stories about his friends and listened to a few stories about Parker and Hardison's antics. Before he knew it, the sun was coming up outside and he was yawning from being up all night. 

"I really should take a nap," Eliot said. "I'm on lunch duty today and it wouldn't do to fall asleep at the oven." 

"Yeah, I should go. I need to get to work. It was great seeing you. We definitely need to catch up soon, now that I know you're alive." 

"You could come for dinner this weekend." 

So they made arrangements and Jacob promised to be there so long as nothing urgent came up at work. He regretted that comments a moment later when Eliot asked, "What could be urgent at a library?" 

"Er..." Jacob only floundered for a moment. "Leaking water pipes near the rare volumes. Thieves breaking in. The boss discovering there's some new antique that absolutely has to be added to the library's collection and it'll only be available for a brief time." The only part of that that was really a lie was the part about leaking pipes, and that was only because it had been the fountain of youth that had sprung a leak, which had nearly been a disaster for reasons not relating to water damaged books. 

Ezekiel had been more of a handful as a toddler than as an adult. 

Eliot seemed to accept the answer. He stood up and walked Jacob to the apartment door and down the stairs. This time, they didn't go out through the kitchen but to a side door separate from the restaurant. 

"Next time, call before you stop by," Eliot said. "Hardison gets a little touchy about his security systems." 

"I would, but I don't have your number." 

Eliot held out a hand for Jacob's phone to enter his number into it and sent himself a text. While he was doing that, Jacob considered how he was supposed to say goodbye. Were they supposed to shake hands like acquaintances, or should he just walk away, or would Eliot expect something more emotional? Would a hug be weird after all this time separated? Or would Eliot feel hurt if Jacob didn't try to hug him? Eliot had never been particularly physically affectionate, but that had been when they were kids, under their dad's disapproving gaze. There was no way to know how much he might have changed since then. 

So Jacob just stood there, hesitating, after he took the phone back. 

Eliot solved the dilemma for him, pulling him into a hug and patting him twice on the back before quickly stepping away. 

"I'll see you at the weekend," Jacob said. "And I'll text if anything comes up." 

"Likewise." 

Jacob walked away. He deliberately didn't turn around to see if Eliot was still standing in the doorway watching him go. It would be a silly thing to care about. It wasn't like they were going to be separated for another decade. He'd be back in a few days and they could continue the process of getting reacquainted. 

And in the meantime, he could try to figure out what the hell was going on with their methods of helping people.


	5. Chapter 5

There was nothing urgent in the clippings book, just a piece about a newly uncovered book being added to the British Library’s treasures collection with Ezekiel had taken it upon himself to recover for them, with Eve as backup. The rest of them were ready in case something went wrong but otherwise holding down the fort. Jacob was glad not to be running around museums stealing old books because he had barely managed an hour’s sleep after he got back from seeing Eliot.

He yawned his way through the day as he pulled out books from the library shelves, looking for information on justice spells or artefacts that might cause the sort of effects he’d read about on the forum. He gathered a pile of useful-looking texts and settled in to read at the long table in the annex. 

Sometime later, he jerked awake as the door activated and Eve and Ezekiel walked in, mid-argument. 

“Because the lyrics to Yesterday aren’t a magical artefact,” Eve was saying, while Jacob blinked around and tried to work out where he was and what was happening. 

“You clearly haven’t spent enough time listening to that song,” Ezekiel said. 

“I take it you retrieved the book?” Jenkins asked, emerging from the stacks. 

“We have it,” Eve said, “and I managed to stop Ezekiel from doing any extra acquiring while we were there.” 

“You couldn’t expect me to pass up a chance to steal the original notes of the words to Yesterday, do you?” Ezekiel asked. 

Jacob frowned at him. “The British Library treasures collection houses some of the oldest Shakespeare quartos, Jane Austin’s writing desk and handwritten novels, a Sherlock Holmes manuscript, and some of the best-preserved religious scrolls and texts of antiquity from around the world… and all you cared about were Beatles lyrics?” 

“Who cares about some old plays and sappy chick lit?” Ezekiel asked. 

“Sappy…” Jacob took a calming breath before he leapt across the room to shake some sense into him. It was probably a good job Flynn wasn’t here right now. “You have no culture.” 

“Culture’s just stuffy old boring stuff.” 

Jacob looked up towards the ceiling and muttered, “Give me strength.” 

A part of him was sure that Ezekiel just acted like this to mess with them, but it was only a part of him. The rest of him was appalled that anyone could be so dismissive of works of intellectual genius. He wasn’t going to deny the artistic merit of Yesterday, but admiring the value of one work didn’t mean dismissive the value of others, and to sneer at works of craftsmanship as stuffy and boring was to completely disregard the skill that had gone into their creation and the value they provided to society. 

But then again, Ezekiel watched reality shows, so he was probably a hopeless case. 

“What are you working on?” Ezekiel asked, handing off the book he was carrying to Jenkins and starting to paw over the ones Jacob had, until recently, been using as an impromptu pillow. “Did the clippings book give us a new case already?” 

“No, this is a private research project.” 

“Oh, another boring paper. I’m going to see if Cassie is doing anything more fun.” 

Jacob didn’t attempt to correct him. He wasn’t ready to talk about this yet. Unfortunately, Eve wasn’t so quick to dismiss his work. She lingered, asking, “Are you alright?” 

"Yeah. Why wouldn't I be?" 

"Well, for one thing you were asleep on the books. Are you not getting enough sleep at night?" She fixed him with a look of deep concern. "Is it what you saw in the vision?" 

"Only in a roundabout fashion," he said. When it was clear she wasn't going to be satisfied with that, he decided he could give a little bit of the truth. "Last night, I met up with someone I hadn't seen in ages and we got talking. Didn't stop talking 'til sunup." 

"Okay." She didn't look completely convinced, but she stopped pressing him. "If you ever need to talk about what you saw, I'm here." 

"Thanks." 

He probably would need to bring this up with the others when he figured out what was going on, but bringing his work and all its associated weirdness crashing into his brother's life felt too soon. Maybe he would be able to identify the magic item and dispose of it quickly without them knowing at all and then he could just introduce Eliot to the others however normal people introduced members of their family to their friends. 

When Eve left, Jacob got back to his books, but it wasn't long before Jenkins returned, the recovered tome presumably sealed away somewhere secure. He lingered by the table, looking at the texts Jacob had open. 

"I was wondering if there was anything I could help you with?" Jenkins asked. If Jacob said no, Jenkins would probably leave him to it, but then he might be here weeks trying to unravel the mystery. Jenkins was the person most likely to have the answers and he hopefully would provide them without pushing for details. Even though he'd decided to work on this alone for the time being, he thought he could ask for Jenkins' help without it turning into a massive project that the entire Library was involved in. He could still keep his brother and the rest of his life separate for a time. 

"I was trying to find out," Jacob said, "if there were any magical artefacts that could be used to give people justice when they've been wronged, or magical creatures who might involve themselves in putting injustices to right." 

Jenkins hmmed thoughtfully for a moment before answering. "There are a few items that come to mind. The Scales of Justice were used in trials. The accuser and accused would each touch one side of the scales and if the accused person had committed the crime, they would... well... let's just say die and leave it at that. On the other hand, if the accused person was innocent of the crime then it was the accuser who would die horribly. There was the Scepter of Isdil the Dread, which would strike down murderers with a touch. There was a noose which would only hang the guilty and the Blade of Nemnoren which would refuse to cut innocent skin but absorb the blood of the guilty so that even a scratch would bleed them dry. There was the Orb of... something - it'll come back to me - that was supposed to kill only the guilty, but since most people tend to feel guilty about something, it has a tendency to kill anyone who touches it. Now that I think of it, there were a lot of artefacts that could be used to punish criminals. Thankfully, most of them are safe in the Library's vaults." 

"It's nothing like that," Jacob said. He thought of the stories from the website, trying to come up with a good example. "If someone was cheated by someone else, the person who did the cheating would get exposed and lose their winnings and the person who was wronged would get back whatever was stolen with interest." 

"That's a little less bloody than most artefacts invoked to provide justice." 

"I haven't found any sign of people dying." 

"That's good, but you can't be too careful. Sometimes an artefact needs to gather power. It might be building up to something more deadly." 

Jacob hoped not. He didn't want to believe his brother would be involved in anything like that, but people often used magical artefacts without realising how dangerous they could be. 

"If you think an artefact might be out there," Jenkins said, "you should find it and bring it here. The effects seem harmless, even beneficial, in the short term, but they can become deadly quickly if things go wrong." 

Jacob had already been thinking along those lines as Jenkins rattled off the list of deadly artefacts, and those were just the ones he'd been able to think of off the top of his head. But it wasn't just a potential artefact at play here. There was still Parker to consider. 

"What about magical creatures?" he asked. 

"Creatures interested in justice in general are rare, but there are plenty who care about justice as it applies to them. Some of the more benign trickster spirits will set traps to test a person's character, like pretending to be a beggar asking for help. A person who gives them their last coin will find themselves showered in gold while the person who is rude and ungenerous will face a horrible fate." 

That was a theme from many old folk tales, one that had even made it into Disney movies with the Enchantress in Beauty and the Beast. Even ancient Greek myths had something similar, with Gods posing as weary travellers to see if humans would extend hospitality to strangers. Ovid's Metamorphoses had Zeus rewarding Baucis and Philemon after he and Hermes were treated as honoured guests even though the couple had nothing to spare. At least, the narrative framed it as a reward that they were made guardians of a temple to the gods and later transformed into trees. 

Gods might have very different views of rewards to humans. 

Jacob really hoped there weren't ancient gods at play here but a powerful spirit dealing out justice or vengeance on a whim was a strong possibility. 

"Tread carefully," Jenkins warned him. "These manner of creatures can be extremely dangerous when provoked." 

Jacob nodded. He really hoped this was a simple matter of an artefact, but until he knew for sure what Parker was, he would have to tread very carefully indeed.


	6. Chapter 6

Jacob arrived a little early for dinner to give himself a little time to investigate without interfering with his time getting reacquainted with his brother. He'd wondered about bringing wine or beer or something, but he wasn't much of a wine drinker and it seemed ruder to bring a six pack to a brew pub than to just show up empty handed. So in the end, all he had was the magic detector tucked into his pocket. He paused outside the building to check its readings, walking around a little way to gather readings from different positions for more accuracy. 

This magic detector was Ezekiel's latest version, which had been updated with GPS and maps of ley line positions to adjust for geographic fluctuations in the level of background magic. His quick scans of the level of magic in the area varied slightly, the numbers on the display fluctuating between 0.1 and 0.15. There wasn't a defined system of measurement for strength of magic, so Ezekiel had worked out his own and set the scale to account for the ley lines and given a number of 0.1 as the average background magic level once that known, geographic element was factored in. So this area was marginally above average but not in any way that was notable, certainly nowhere near what Ezekiel had labelled the concern threshold. 

Jacob started to hope that he'd been wrong. A magical entity would result in higher background readings if they were active. But it was also possible that the readings would only spike when Parker, whatever she was, was actively using powers. 

He tucked the detector away and headed for the back door. Hardison answered almost as soon as he rang the buzzer, greeting him with a smile and showing him upstairs to the apartment where Eliot was at work in the kitchen. He had a proper chef's jacket on and a band of cloth around his head to hold back his hair as he diced vegetables with terrifying efficiency. 

"Give me a minute to get this in the oven," he said, "and then I'll give you the proper tour." 

Hardison kept going, saying, "I'll be in my workshop. Yell when the food's ready." 

Eliot coated the vegetables in oil and sprinkled them with herbs before sliding them into the oven on a tray. When the oven door opened, enticing smells wafted out, making Jacob's stomach rumble appreciatively. 

"I hope you're hungry," Eliot said. "I may have overdone things a bit." 

He looked almost nervous. Jacob wondered if he'd been trying to show off. Cooking was a thing that Dad wouldn't have approved of except as a means to keeping them alive. Eliot had only got away with taking home economics in school because the teacher had been hot and Dad had taken that as a sign of Eliot being a normal teenager. Any homophobic impulses that might have arisen from hearing that his son liked cookery were quenched by the belief in teenage hormones and so Eliot had managed to avoid the edge of their dad's wrath so long as he had pretended indifference. Jacob wondered if Eliot's feeling about sharing his food were similar to the ones he'd felt when he'd admitted to working in a library and writing papers on art history. The knowledge that Dad wouldn't have approved was hard to shake off, and there was a lingering fear that the brother might not either. It was hard to believe that a thing was worthwhile after spending formative years hearing the opposite. 

If Eliot needed to be recognised for his interests as much as he had, Jacob would fulfill that need. Jacob was determined to show his appreciation of Eliot's cooking if this was what he was passionate about, and from the smell, he wouldn't have to pretend. 

Eliot set the timer and then gave him a grin. "I didn't get to show you round last time." 

He took Jacob from that large living area and through into a short hallway with a few doors off it and a portrait of a silver-haired man on the wall. Eliot didn't even glance the painting, just starting opening doors to show Jacob inside. 

"Downstairs bathroom," he said, not bothering to go inside that one. "This is Parker's office." They paused in the doorway and Jacob got a glimpse of an office that looked very impersonal. There were a couple of houseplants on the desk beside the computer, and a whiteboard that had a few marks that hadn't been erased properly, but there was little to give the room a feel like a person occupied this space. 

Eliot quickly moved on, "This is the gym." 

Jacob expected a home gym with an exercise bike and maybe a few dumbbells, but the space beyond was large and well equipped, and Jacob could only guess at the sort of expense that must have gone into this set-up. There was an exercise bike, but there was also a treadmill and a rowing machine, all with fancy-looking screens. A rack of weights took up about a third of one wall and there was a punch bag and pads in one corner. All of the equipment was clearly actively used, but not shabby or run-down in any way. The middle of the room had mats. It looked like Eliot had kept up his boxing. 

"We have to spar sometime," Jacob said. 

"Sure, if you want." Eliot's expression said that he was indulging Jacob. It said he thought any match between them would be a foregone conclusion. 

"Hey, I might surprise you," Jacob said. 

"It'll take more than a few bar fights for you to be a match for me." 

"I'll have you know, I trained with a kung fu master when I took a trip to China a year or so ago." 

"You'll have to show me what you've learned." Eliot was polite enough about it, but it was clear he didn't think much of Jacob's boast. It wasn't like Jacob could say that he trained with the Monkey King in Shangri-La so he let the subject drop. If they did spar on their next visit, he would either hold his own or not. If he did, then there was no need to boast about his skills. If he didn't, then he would be much happier not having lead up to it with any overconfident claims. 

The tour continued and Eliot took him through to the next room. 

"This is Hardison's workshop. Avoid touching anything in here unless you want to be electrocuted." 

That last part was said a little louder as the door was opening, obviously intended for the ears of the room's occupant as well as Jacob. Hardison looked up from a table cluttered with circuit boards and wires and overflowing toolboxes. 

"If you didn't want to get electrocuted, you shouldn't have been poking around in my stuff," Hardison said. 

"I was looking for flashlight batteries." 

"So it's one rule for your fridge and another for my storage boxes, I see how it is." 

"So you are admitting you ate that sandwich." 

"Seriously? Get over the damn sandwich!" 

"Erm," Jacob wasn't sure he liked where this was going, whatever Parker might have said last time about pretend arguing. "Do I want to ask?" 

"Best not," Eliot said. 

Jacob had no idea what half of the stuff in this room was. It looked like someone had taken the backroom of an electronics shop and just dumped everything in this room before letting lose a tornado inside it. Bits of machine and computer parts were scattered everywhere and Jacob was almost afraid to step foot inside in case he trod on something expensive, because the mess was not limited to the surfaces of the worktables. 

Hardison moved around with ease though, so maybe there was some sort of system to the chaos. 

He took Jacob out and showed him upstairs. Given the height of the main living area, the upstairs area was confined to about half the floor space as the downstairs, but there was room enough for another bathroom and the bedrooms. 

"That's Parker's room," Eliot indicated a closed door. "Best to stay out of there. She values her privacy." He walked past to the next door. "This one's Hardison's." He opened the door to allow a glimpse inside at a space cluttered with more gadgets, stray clothes, and several empty soda bottles. It was as chaotic as the workshop downstairs but in a more domesticated way. Eliot closed the door and went to the final one. "This is mine." 

They went inside this room. It was neat, with the bed perfectly made and none of the clutter that littered Hardison's. Eliot had always been tidier than Jacob, but this room was pristine, with very little sign of the man who lived there. Jacob wondered if Eliot had tidied up to make it look better for him. Was he trying to make a good impression on his estranged brother? 

There were a few personal touches that gave life to the room. On the wall to either side of the bed were photos. One was of Eliot, Parker, and Hardison. Parker was standing between the other two, arms around both of them, grinning at the camera. The other photo had the three of them as well, with two others. The man looked like a younger version of the man in the portrait downstairs, a son or perhaps a grandson. From the stories, Jacob guessed these two were Sophie and Nate. 

Hung on the wall between the photo was a sword, a Japanese style katana. 

"Nice sword." 

"Thanks. It was a Christmas present." 

There wasn't much else to look at. Jacob suspected that this was a room Eliot came to sleep, not to do much of anything else. All of this did show though a surprising amount of wealth. The apartment wasn't ostentatious or decorated with anything obviously pricey, but the equipment in the gym and the kitchen, coupled with the small fortune of electronics equipment in the workshop and the big screens in the living area all indicated a surprising amount of money for three people running a small restaurant. Jacob thought of the stories about people magically finding money in their possession after coming here and wondered about that too. 

Eliot led the way back downstairs again in time for the timer to go off. He grabbed oven mitts. 

"I've just got five minutes of prep to do," Eliot said. 

"No problem. I'll just use the bathroom while you finish up." 

Jacob did exactly that, heading for the downstairs bathroom. Once his business was done and his hands washed, he took the opportunity to get his magic detector out again. The numbers were higher inside than they'd been outside, around wavering between 0.2 and 0.3 depending on the direction he aimed the device. Still nowhere near the concern threshold, but noticeable, and the numbers definitely increased in a specific direction. There was a source of magic nearby. 

Jacob opened the bathroom door and glanced out, but there was no way Eliot could see him from here. He moved slowly down the hallway, changing the angle of the detector and looking for the one that gave him the highest readings. 

As he drew closer to the portrait that hung on the wall, there could be no doubt. The numbers on the magic detector crept higher with each step and his changing angle meant he could be confident of the source of these readings. The painting of the silver-haired man was a magical artefact.


	7. Chapter 7

The reading still wasn't particularly high. Even here, right next to the painting, the readings were barely making it over 0.6. Ezekiel had built the device so that 1 would be what he'd dubbed the concern threshold. Anything under that number was deemed too trivial for them to bother with. The sort of artefacts they were usually sent after by the clippings book were usually well above 3 or 4. So if this painting was the source of the strangeness, maybe it would be alright after all. Jacob had found a good luck charm in a thrift shop that had been about a 0.5 once and Jenkins hadn't even bothered stopping Ezekiel taking it to the race track. Ezekiel hadn't even won all of his bets. 

A painting with a magical level of 0.6 wasn't a threat, but he also wasn't sure he would explain all the stories from the website. There had to be something going on here that he was missing. Something like this shouldn't have been powerful enough to have a noticeable effect on the world, not enough of an effect to get the attention this restaurant had gained. 

A door opened and Jacob barely managed to get the magic detector into his pocket in time. He turned to see Hardison emerge from the workshop. 

"Hey," Hardison said. "You admiring the painting?" 

Jacob had to give a reason for why he'd been staring at it, so he said, "I was trying to work out what I could about the artist." 

"What did you work out?" Hardison sounded amused. 

Jacob studied the painting again, this time seeing it as an artistic work and not as a potentially dangerous magical artefact. This exercise might help him learn something about the power behind it, so it was worth doing anyway. 

"The style of suit would put the age of the painting as within the last century, more likely the last five or six decades, but the lack of any signs of aging on the texture or colour fading would suggest it's more recent. Probably painted in the last two decades. The level of detail is greater on the face than the clothes, which is not uncommon for modern portraits. The composition is a little more close in than would be more common for a portrait showing the torso, but not so much as to deviate from the mainstream and that close-in image would make sense for a portrait where the subject wishes to appear imposing or in charge, so it's more common in corporate images. The artist has clearly been trained in classical styles but there's nothing particularly... distinctive about the style. When you look at the work of a great master, they have a sort of signature, things that are characteristic of their work in particular. This painting doesn't show that sort of signature. The brush strokes are careful but not exceptional. The colours are pedestrian. The realism is good but the detail isn't particularly noteworthy. It's the work of someone who is technically competent but who hasn't really developed their own flair. They paint in the way they might have been taught in an art class but without having added their own spark to it." 

"Technically competent," Hardison said, tone noticeably less happy than it had been before Jacob’s mini lecture. "I guess that's something." 

Jacob had a looming realisation of something from that reaction. "You painted this, didn't you?" 

"I did." 

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be rude." 

"No. It's fine. I'll take technically competent. It's not like paint is my main medium for my art. I was just dabbling." 

"Well it's really good for someone who was just dabbling," Jacob said, and that was true. He had taken the painting to be a professional work, not someone amateur. 

"Thanks. I don't tend to get the paints out all that often." 

"What do you do then?" 

"Oh, bits of everything. A bit of painting here, some sewing there. I play the violin. I got into putting together electro-music mixes for a while. I'm great with photo-manipulation and video editing, and occasionally dabble in a bit of animation. I made Eliot a Mr Punchy animation that he loved. I even tried my hand at book binding once." 

"So, your main medium for art is... everything," Jacob said. It seemed like Hardison had tried his hand at everything. It didn't explain why a painting he'd done would read as a magical artefact though. Had Hardison done a spell in its creation? Had it been infused with magic later? Was Hardison a sorcerer? The latter seemed unlikely given the lack of other strong magical readings, but it was possible he dabbled with magic as he dabbled with everything else. 

"I get bored easily. And sometimes you just get the urge to make something, you know." 

"Are we talking about old Nate?" Parker asked. Jacob jumped so hard he nearly fell over onto Hardison. Where had she come from? 

Jacob liked to think he'd gotten a lot more observant since joining the Library but he hadn't seen Parker approach at all. 

"I was just getting some feedback on my masterpiece from a world expert." 

Parker leaned in towards Jacob, crossing the boundaries of normal personal space. She sounded almost conspiratorial as she said, "He's really proud of that painting. He's insisted on hanging it in every base of operations we've had, even when we had to set up in a random house after the first office blew up." 

"Your first office blew up?" 

Hardison moved to put an arm around Parker, pulling her away a little. "She's joking. That was a choke. Blew up. Pfft." 

"I'm not joking. You don't remember?" The look she gave Hardison was full of concern. "You had to blow up the office because of Stirling." 

Hardison's mouth was set in a forced grin as he murmured, "Remember what Eliot said to us this morning." 

"Oh. Oh!" Parker's expression changed to one of understanding. "Yes. I'm joking. We never had to blow up our offices." 

She was not convincing as a liar. Did that rule out the possibility of her being a trickster spirit? 

Eliot appeared at the end of the hallway asking, "Do you guys want food or not?" 

Jacob let himself be distracted by his brother’s food. He went to the table and was served a plate of beef cut into thin slices, still a little pink the middle. There were roasted vegetables and some kind of fried cake made with potatoes and infused with herbs, all drizzled with a dark sauce. It smelled amazing and the first bite was even better, the flavours dancing across his tongue, melding together into something powerful. 

Jacob had no difficulty praising Eliot's cooking, and Eliot seemed genuinely pleased, so Jacob let him have this moment before he started asking awkward questions, waiting until the first course was largely done before he said, "So, Parker said your first office blew up." 

Eliot glared at Parker. 

"Would you believe gas leak?" he asked. 

"Unlikely. I do know a thing or two about gas works." 

"It's rather complicated and I'd prefer not to go into it." 

Jacob might have let things drop, to preserve what was still just a fledgling relationship after such a long time apart, but he was worried. He'd found one magical item and there was a chance that there was something more going on. 

"Not telling me is just going to make me more worried," Jacob said. "Are you mixed up with something dangerous?" 

He didn't say the M word. He still felt like he knew too little to pull on that thread, even with the confirmation about the painting. 

Eliot didn't answer right away. He set down his knife and fork and stared at the plate in front of him as though it might hold the mysteries of the universe. On either side of the table, Hardison and Parker looked at each other, but Jacob was barely aware of them. He focused his attention on his brother, waiting for explanation or excuse. 

"I told you before that we help people," Eliot said. 

"Yes, and you were somewhat vague as to how." 

"We help people who the law can't or won't help, and we don't always play by the rules to do it. Let's say someone has their work stolen by a big corporation. They might not have enough evidence for the police to get a warrant to investigate to get the work back. Or maybe the police are corrupt. So we would hack into the corporation's servers to get the information and either give it back to the person it was stolen from or make sure evidence finds its way into the hands of the authorities. Or both. Sometimes, we physically break into somewhere to get to what was stolen. Sometimes, we run a con on someone so that we can expose their dirty dealings. We do what we have to get the results for our clients."

"So you help people by committing crimes?" It wasn't the answer Jacob had been expecting, but now that he heard it, it made a certain amount of sense. 

"There are people out there who have so much money that they think they're above the law, or who exploit loopholes written into the legal system by billionaires. We prove them wrong by not playing by the rules. But this means that when we get in trouble, we can't always go to the police either and sometimes the people we go up against have a lot of money and resources to try and stop us. It can get dangerous sometimes." 

"We're not bad guys," Parker said. "I mean, we are sometimes, but sometimes bad guys are the only good guys you get." 

"We've done a lot of good for a lot of people," Hardison said. 

Jacob thought back to the vision he'd seen, to Eliot talking about how they helped people in a way that would be difficult to understand. In that vision, Hardison had talked about the good they did and told Eliot that Jacob would be proud of who he was now. The vision had been intended to show him truth. Had he been meant to take that message away from it to? 

Across the table, Eliot was looking at him with fear in his eyes. He was afraid of Jacob's reaction. He looked more vulnerable in that moment than Jacob had ever seen him, and that set an ache in his heart. 

Jacob made the decision in that moment that he would at least try to understand. 

"'One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws'," he quoted. "Martin Luther King." 

The relief on Eliot's face was obvious. 

"So you're okay with this?" he asked. 

Jacob was friends with Ezekiel Jones so he was well aware that someone could be a thief and a good person, and from the messages on the forum he'd found, these people really did help. People came here when they were desperate and they got justice for wrongs that had been done to them. It explained why Eliot had been secretive, if he'd thought that Jacob might reject him when he found out that they were breaking the law, but it was true that laws were often written to support those in power. 

"I'm willing to listen," Jacob said. 

"Thank you." 

There was still one piece of this that didn't make sense. The weird stories and the secrecy all fit with them hiding a criminal enterprise behind the restaurant's facade, but that didn't explain what he'd picked up with his magic detector. 

"So what's with the painting?" he asked.


	8. Chapter 8

"You mean old Nate?" Eliot asked. "What about it?" 

"He was telling me how much he admired my skill," Hardison said. 

"He called it competent," Parker corrected. Hardison shot her an annoyed look. 

"Hardison painted that thing after our first job together, when he was setting up the office," Eliot said, "and he turned it into a weird mascot or something. It's just a painting." 

"You said 'Nate'. It's a painting of your friend?" 

"Sort of," Hardison said. "I set up a business as a front for our operation, complete with corporate history, tax records, even a staff newsletter. In inviting this company, I invented a fake founder: Harlin Leverage the third. I gave him Nate's face but with a few tweaks and a few decades added on. I put the painting in the office as part of the cover story." 

"And then insisted on taking it with us everywhere we went after," Eliot added. "He has a weird fixation about having to have it with us." 

"It's not just a painting," Hardison insisted. "It represents Leverage, who we are, what we do. I gave the painting Nate's face because he was our leader at the time, but it represents all of us, all the good we do, all the people we've helped. Excuse me if I happen to find meaning in things." 

Representative magic was old, used across cultures around the world. Someone would create a link between a symbol and a person or a thing, and then perform magic on that symbol to affect whatever it symbolised. If the painting represented the group then whatever magic was done on it would affect them. If Hardison had painted it, then most likely he had performed whatever ritual was needed to connect it to the group, but it was unlikely that the magic was malicious if he cast it on a group he was a part of. But something didn't have to be deliberately malicious to be dangerous. 

Jacob was trying to put the pieces he had together into an understanding of the situation. He was starting to suspect that Eliot didn't know about magic, which made him extremely glad that he hadn't brought up the subject earlier, but he suspected that Hardison did. There might be another explanation for all of this, like committing crimes to help people had been an explanation for the weird stories, but Hardison's interest in the painting seemed strange even to his partners. And there was still Parker to be explained. 

Over dessert, a truly magnificent lemon cheesecake, Jacob asked more questions about their work and was treated to stories about getting one over on people who didn't care when their companies killed people, or sleazy music producers who would break a musician's hand over a song, or people who would create plague or famine for their own agendas and not care how many people they hurt. 

Sometime during those later stories, Jacob realised how dangerous what his brother did was. He'd been worried about Eliot messing around with magic he didn't fully understand, but now he realised he should have been more concerned about terrorists and murderers who he thwarted on a regular basis. 

"Most of our jobs aren't nearly that dramatic," Eliot said, probably reading Jacob's worry on his face. "Last week, we took down a bakery owner who mixed chalk dust with her competition's flour and then reported her for it as a health hazard. Not exactly a master criminal." 

"Especially since she didn't even wipe her fingerprints," Parker put in. 

"You don't have to worry," Hardison said. "We're good at what we do. You don't have to worry about getting lucky if you have skill on your side." 

That sounded almost like something Ezekiel might say. 

"We do get lucky too," Parker said. "We get lucky a lot. Some of Nate's schemes we should never have been able to pull off, but we always did." 

Jacob looked at Hardison as she said that and thought he saw something on his face, a flicker of nervousness or something, gone too quickly to be sure of. Jacob wondered if that was what the painting represented. A luck spell? Protection? He'd seen a few protective charms and there were plenty of rituals out there that claimed to offer protection against the various ills of the world, though most did little to nothing. It was entirely possible that Hardison had cast a protection spell on the painting he used to symbolise their group, helping them shift luck in their favour when they needed it. The magic levels had been low enough that it wouldn't cause miracles. It wouldn't block a gunshot or anything that dramatic, but it might cause a shooter to tread on a creaking floorboard before shooting to give the team a moment's warning and let them dodge out of the way. 

He wouldn't know for sure without a way to study the painting properly, and to do that, he'd need to get it back to the Library. But that wasn't the only mystery left. 

When the meal was over, Hardison said that he and Parker would clear up, leaving Jacob and Eliot to move to the couch and continue talking. It was only when the other two had left the room completely that Jacob brought up the other thing that was on his mind. 

"I don't mean to be rude, but what's with Parker?" 

"What do you mean?" Eliot's tone was hard steel, sharp as a knife. Jacob considered his next words carefully, feeling as though his whole rekindled relationship with his brother teetered on that knife edge. 

"She seems to appear out of nowhere," he said. "When I came here that first time, I swear she appeared out of the ceiling." 

"She does that. Parker likes air vents and elevator shafts. Hardison had this place refitted with extra large air vents just for her." 

"You don't find that strange?" 

"Some people enjoy playing golf. Parker's habits are less likely to cause droughts and devastating ecological damage." 

He hadn't denied that it was strange, Jacob noted. 

"Okay, but that first time I came here, when she thought I was you with a haircut, Hardison was giving her tips on making conversation and she wanted a cookie for demonstrating human socialisation." 

"Parker's Parker," Eliot answered. Jacob left the silence to hang between them to point out that that wasn't much of an answer. After a few moments, Eliot continued. "My guess is that she's somewhere on the autism spectrum, but she's never had a formal diagnosis and it doesn't really matter. She's got her own way of doing things and it works for her. There's nothing wrong with her being the way she is." That last part was delivered with a glare and that same steel tone he'd used earlier. 

"But if that's the case, why bribe her with cookies to behave differently?" 

Eliot paused once again before giving an answer. "Parker struggles to connect with people. She can be one of the kindest, most empathetic people you could ever meet, but she's not good at expressing it in a way that other people appreciate. She's not good at figuring out what's going on in a social situation and know what's appropriate to say or do. It's like everyone on the planet has a little rule book of how to interact with other people - how to make small talk, when it's reasonable to make jokes, what's acceptable personal space, whether a comment is going to be taken well or badly. Some of those rules you're taught when you're a kid, like saying please and thank you, and others you just figure out as you grow." 

"Different cultures have different social norms," Jacob pointed out. "It's not like there's a fixed set of rules." 

"And that just makes it more complicated. If there was a set of rules that absolutely always applied, she could learn them and stick to them, but things vary based on the people you're with, where you are, the situation you're in. Most people muddle through with varying degrees of success with their own personal rule books, making amendments to those rules if they move somewhere new or end up in new situations. No one gave Parker that rulebook. She didn't have the most stable of childhoods, which couldn't have helped, and then she spent years relying only on herself so she never learned how to interact with other people under normal circumstances. She's got a lot better since we formed Leverage, Sophie helped her a lot, but she still struggles sometimes, so we help her out when she says or does something that someone might take the wrong way." 

"Trying to help her be normal." 

Eliot glared. "No. Never. It's not about changing who she is, but we run cons, we play characters, we have to adapt to the situation and the circumstances. We help Parker with playing neurotypical when she needs to, but underneath she's still Parker. We help her express her intentions towards other people in a way they're more likely to understand, but we don't try to change who she is underneath. She doesn't need to change that." 

Jacob was not going to argue with the way Eliot said these things. 

He wondered if it said something terrible about him that his first thought on meeting Parker was that she was something supernatural. The idea of her being autistic but perfectly human had never occurred to him. His own biases had caused him to leap to a conclusion and if she'd been able to read his thoughts it probably would have been deeply offensive to her that he'd reacted in this way. He would learn to do better, he promised himself. 

Given this natural explanation for Parker's strangeness, and the comment about her childhood implying she had grown up like any other person, Jacob set aside for now the idea of her being magical. But there was still the painting. That was still a mystery to be solved. That was what he would focus on. 

It was time he talk to the other Librarians about all of this.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And now the moment I think a lot of people have been waiting for.

Jacob gathered the Librarians, Eve, and Jenkins together in the annex. Flynn was off somewhere dealing with Icelandic trolls and had insisted it wasn’t serious enough to require a Guardian or anyone else to go with him, but the rest of the team were all there.

“What’s this about?” Eve asked. She looked worried. She’d been looking worried a lot around him since the truth potion. 

“I’ve come across what seems to be a magical artefact,” Jacob said. “It’s recently created and not particularly powerful – barely over point six on Ezekiel’s scale. I don’t think it’s dangerous. My best guess is that it’s probably granting good luck or mild protection, but I want to do some more checks to be sure.” 

“Can you bring it to the Library?” Jenkins asked. 

“Not without awkward questions, which I’d like to avoid if it’s not a threat. It’s a painting.” 

“Where did you uncover it?” 

“Bridgeport Brewpub, downtown.” 

“No,” said Ezekiel. “No, no, no, no, no. No.” 

“What?” It was Cassandra who asked the question but it was written on all of their faces. 

“That’s a front for the Leverage crew,” Ezekiel said. “We do not want to go up against them. They managed to take down Chaos.” 

“I’m sure that would be impressive if we knew who or what Chaos is,” said Eve. 

“Chaos is a hacker, one of the best.” 

“I wasn’t aware you were capable of acknowledging anyone could be better than you at anything,” put in Jenkins. 

“I didn’t say he was better than me. No one is better than Ezekiel Jones. But aside from me, he is one of the best. He’s good. Never been caught. Never even come close to getting caught and then he goes up against the Leverage crew and ends up arrested by the FBI.” 

“Getting criminals arrested by the FBI doesn’t sound too bad to me,” said Eve. 

“They are criminals. Hardison, brilliant hacker. Parker, who everyone in the international thieving community agrees is completely insane. Taking on them would be a challenge but they’re not the reason we don’t want to go against these people. Their hitter is Eliot Spencer.” He said the name like it was the twist in a horror story and Eve reaction in much the same way. She swore and blanched. 

“You know him?” Jacob asked. 

“By reputation. Eliot Spencer is ruthless. He was the right-hand man for Damien Moreau.” 

“I still don’t know who you’re talking about,” Cassandra said. 

“Moreau was a major player,” Eve told her. “One of the most dangerous criminals in the world until he got on the bad side of the wrong dictator and ended up flung in a pit on some island nation somewhere. Drug smuggling, arms dealing, human trafficking. If it was illegal and it hurt people, he was probably up to his neck in it, and if anyone got in his way, Eliot Spencer was the one he sent to get them out of it. If Moreau wanted someone beaten up or tortured for information or killed in a brutal way to send a message, Eliot Spencer was the one who did it.” 

Jacob felt something cold settling in his gut. 

They couldn’t be talking about the same Eliot. His brother wasn’t a brutal killer who worked for monsters like that. 

He wanted to argue. Wanted to tell them they were wrong. Wanted to stick his fingers in his ears and hum until he stopped hearing their words. 

But he remembered the vision from the truth potion, how Eliot had said he hadn’t gone home because he’d been scared his brother would hate him for the things he’d done. Jacob had allowed himself to forget that part of the conversation but it was truth too that Eliot had done things he thought himself a monster for. 

“I should call my contacts at DOSA,” Eve said. “If we’re going up against Eliot Spencer, I want an army.” 

She sounded almost scared. She had faced down minotaurs and sorcerers, but what scared her more obviously than any of those was the possibility of going up against Eliot. 

“That’s not necessary,” Jacob said. “He’s not a threat.” Because he had to believe that. Whatever Eliot might have done in the past, he was no threat to Jacob and his friends now. 

Everyone turned to stare at him. 

“What makes you say that?” Eve asked slowly, worry vying with suspicion for control of her tone of voice. 

He was almost glad for the interruption of his phone ringing. At least until he saw the name on the screen. He grimaced slightly, aware of everyone still staring at him. He considered letting it go to voicemail, but he didn’t want Eliot to think he was ignoring him while their reformed relationship still felt so fragile. 

He hit the answer button, raised the phone to his ear, and said, “Hi, Eliot.” 

Horror was written on his friends’ faces. Eve made desperate slicing motions across her throat, telling him to cut off the call. 

“Hey,” Eliot said, “this a good time?” 

“Not really. I’m at work and I’m supposed to be in a meeting, so we need to keep this brief.” 

“I’ll be quick then. Are you doing anything Saturday night?” 

“Not much, no.” Ezekiel had planned to go out so Jacob had intended to use the time for some quiet research time in the Library, but he could do that another time. 

“My friend Sophie got hold of some tickets to an exclusive gallery opening and there happens to be a spare. I thought you might like to go.” 

“Your friend just happened to have a spare ticket?” 

“Okay, so I may have asked her to get it, but do you want to come or not? Lots of fancy people looking at paintings isn’t my idea of a good time, there’s usually too much champagne and not enough beer, but it could still be a fun night. We’re going as a group and you can come along and wow me with all your art know how.” 

“Sure. Sounds like fun.” 

“Cool. If you come by the brewpub first about six, we can all go together. I can lend you a suit if you need help looking fancy and sophisticated.” 

“I do own a suit.” 

“A suit. Good.” Eliot sounded amused. 

“It’s a nice suit.” 

“Okay.” That was the faintly patronising tone again. 

“I wore it to a party at Buckingham Palace.” 

“If you say so.” 

Maybe Jacob had gone a step too far with that, but it was true. 

“You wear your nice suit, and we’ll go to the fancy people party. I’ll see you Saturday.” 

“See you then.” 

Jacob hung up the phone. 

The rest of his team were still staring at him. 

“Please tell me,” Eve said, a strained note in her voice, “that you didn’t just arrange a date with Eliot Spencer.” 

“What? Ew. No.” 

“Ignoring the homophobic look of disgust at the thought of going on a date with a guy,” Ezekiel started. 

“I’m not homophobic!” 

Ezekiel ignored the protest, “Did you just agree to meet up with Eliot Spencer on Saturday? After everything we just said! Are you trying to get yourself killed?” 

“He’s not going to kill me.” 

“You can’t know that,” Eve said. "You should find an excuse to get out of this meeting while you still can. Meeting up with him could be very dangerous." 

"I'm not in any danger." 

“I don't know what he's said to you or how he's acted, but people like that can turn on the charm when they have something to gain." 

"That's not how it is with Eliot." 

"He's a monster," said Ezekiel and all Jacob could hear was the echo of the words from his vision, when Eliot had admitted that he hadn't wanted to go home because he'd been afraid his brother would see him as a monster. Jacob didn't know about Eliot's past, didn't know what terrible things he might have done, didn’t know how much of what Eve believed about him was true, but he'd seen the vulnerability when he'd said those words and he wouldn't let anyone else say them. And so the words slipped out, the truth spilling itself into the space between them. 

"He's my brother!" 

Silence fell over the annex.


	10. Chapter 10

After that revelation, his friends weren't going to let him get away with telling them anything less than everything. So Jacob explained what he'd seen in the vision, including the part about how they helped people. He did his best to ignore Eve's sceptical expression. He talked about researching the brew pub and the website he'd found with all the stories. Ezekiel scoffed. 

"Like you can trust anything you read on the internet where Hardison's concerned," he said. "There's no way he doesn't know about that website, which means it's only still online because he wants it to be. The stories on it are the ones he allows to stay up. Hell, he probably wrote half of them himself." 

"You make it sound like he's got some sort of mystic power to control the internet." 

"He's a hacker, and a damn good one. He's hacked government security agencies. He's not going to be stopped by an amateur web forum." 

"When I read the stories, I didn't think hacker. I saw stories of people saying they received strange or unlikely help when they went to this place." Jacob continued his story, explaining how he went there, his reunion with Eliot, the invitation to dinner. He mentioned his suspicions about Parker, despite having been given a less supernatural explanation. He admitted that Eliot had told him she was probably autistic. 

"Her having magical abilities would explain a few things," Ezekiel said. 

"I don't think she's magic." 

"But you said something else was?" Eve prompted. 

So Jacob explained about the portrait, including what Hardison had said about painting it himself. He started to explain his theory. 

"There's probably a safe behind it," Ezekiel interrupted. "The amount of stuff Parker's stolen over the years, the chances are she's nicked something magical and has it stashed in that apartment somewhere." 

"I hadn't thought of that." 

"Whether it's the painting or something behind it," Eve said, "if they're using magic to commit crimes then we have to do something. Even a low level magical item might be giving them an edge which makes them even more dangerous." 

"They're committing crimes to help people." 

"According to Hardison's propaganda website," Ezekiel said. "I told you, you can't trust anything you read on that." 

"Eliot told me. They've got a Robin Hood scheme going on, where they steal from and con billionaires to help the people being screwed over by those rich assholes." He gave some of the same examples Eliot had told him over the dinner table. Eve's expression was deeply pitying. 

"Jacob," she said, "I'm not saying all of it was a lie. It makes sense that they'd target the rich because the rich have more to steal and maybe they do sometimes help people. But there are right and wrong ways to go about doing things, and everything I know about Eliot Spencer says he's violent and dangerous. Maybe you're right that he wouldn't hurt you, but he's hurt a hell of a lot of other people. He's not a good person." 

"You've never met him," Jacob said. "You said you only know about him from his reputation. Maybe you're wrong. Or maybe he did do everything you say but he regrets it and now he's trying to atone." 

"Why don't we forget about whether or not they’re bad guys?" Cassandra said. "Neither of you are likely to convince the other right now, so let's focus on the painting, or whatever magical item the painting is hiding. Once we know what it is and how dangerous, then we can decide what to do about it." 

Jacob nodded. He didn't like the fact that Eve and Ezekiel were convinced Eliot was evil, but Cassie was right that he wasn't going to change either of their minds right now. Maybe if they met Eliot and heard his stories they'd feel differently about him. He didn't want to consider the possibility that if he heard stories of what Eliot had done between joining the military and forming Leverage he might feel differently too. 

"The best option," Jenkins said, "would be to bring the painting back here so we can perform analyses." 

"Stealing from Leverage," Ezekiel said, "is going to be tricky. I'm not saying I can't do it, I'm just saying we need to plan this carefully. Hardison will have security cameras and sensors all around that place and he knows enough about hacking security systems that he's not going to leave any of the obvious holes. Everything he uses will be either custom built or modified, so my standard tricks won't work and he's bound to be using a wired system so I'd have to physically connect to the network to hack it. Unless he gets his security system to send him status information wherever he is, which would mean it would have to be connected to the internet. That could be my way in, but the authentication around it is going to be mind-blowing." 

"Couldn't we just open the annex backdoor inside the apartment?" Cassie asked. 

"Well, I suppose we could. If we want to cheat." Ezekiel sounded almost disappointed to have been given an answer. He'd probably been looking forward to proving he could outsmart Hardison's security system. "We'd want to be careful about doing it when they're not there. I'm not getting into a fight with Eliot Spencer." 

"They're not going to be there on Saturday," Jacob pointed out. He explained about the invitation to the art gallery and how Eliot had talked about going as a group of friends, so presumably Hardison and Parker would be there as well. 

"I still don't like the idea of you meeting up with him," Eve said. 

"I'm going. I go to the exhibit. Once I'm there, you break into the apartment and grab the painting, or whatever it's hiding. If you go inside with the back door, hopefully it won't trip any alarms and you can run your tests and, if it's harmless, have the painting back on the wall before anyone knows it was gone." 

"You're not going without backup," Eve said. 

Jacob opened his mouth to protest again, to argue that he was perfectly safe from Eliot, but Cassandra was right. There was only so much he could say to convince them. 

"Fine. You sneak into the exhibit to watch my back and the others steal the painting." 

There were a few more small details to work out, but not much. They each knew their jobs. After a bit, Jacob left the annex to get some space before he started yelling at his friends for not listening to him. It didn't do him much good. A couple of hours later, Ezekiel found him curled up in an armchair in the stacks. Ezekiel had a folder with him. 

"You need to know who you're dealing with," Ezekiel said, tossing the folder at him. Jacob caught it but didn't open it. He felt a dryness in his throat at the thought of opening it, at seeing whatever it was Ezekiel thought he needed warning about. 

"That file's not as thick as it should be," Ezekiel continued. "A lot of his military history is sealed away behind encryption and firewalls that even I need time to break through, and both the FBI and Interpol experienced mysterious loss of evidence in their cases against Leverage, but that should give you a taste of what sort of man your brother is." 

Ezekiel walked away without another word. Jacob stared at the folder on his lap. 

Did he want to look? Should he look? 

Eliot had said that he looked at himself in the mirror and saw a monster. Was that what Jacob would see if he looked at the information in this folder? It was a massive breach of privacy for him to delve into Eliot's history, knowing that his brother wanted to keep it hidden, but on the other hand, he couldn't just bury his head in the sand. He knew that Eliot had done bad things. Wasn't it better that he was aware of what those things were? 

Would it destroy his relationship with Eliot? Or would not looking be worse because his imagination could furnish him with images of terrible deeds that might be worse than the reality? 

And was it right to look, when Eliot was trying to atone for those actions? He had dedicated his life to helping people, to fighting for the little guy. If that was the person he was now then looking at the person he had been was doing him a disservice. Unless he really was still that person, under a facade of benevolence. Unless the shows of helping people were just that: a show. 

Jacob sat there, staring at the cover of the folder. Not ready to open it. He had thought he could cope with the truth when he drank the potion, but this truth seemed a step too far. He wasn't ready to know the worst of who his brother could be.


	11. Chapter 11

Jacob showed up at the brew pub wearing his nice suit. He tugged a little at the tie, his nerves making it harder to deal with what felt like something trying to strangle him. He didn't understand how people could wear these things on a regular basis. He thought he looked nice in the suit, more serious and more of an academic than his usual outfits, but it was so much harder to move in this thing. The jacket felt like an unnecessary weight on his shoulders, hampering his arm movements, the shoes would be uncomfortable to run in if things went badly, and always there was that tie. 

It was almost worth it though for the amused surprise on Eliot's face when he greeted him with, "Wow. That's actually a nice suit." 

Eliot was dressed smartly too, with an actual tuxedo and what looked like a proper bowtie, not one held on by elastic. With his hair pulled back into a ponytail, he looked like he might have been the academic, not someone who even Eve Baird was afraid of. 

"Everything alright?" Eliot asked, as he showed Jacob upstairs. 

"Yeah. I've been looking forward to this." Because he couldn't start asking questions about secrets when they were supposed to be having a fun evening. And when he was supposed to be distracting Eliot. If he started asking questions about the time before Leverage, Eliot probably wouldn't want to go to an art exhibit and neither would he. 

Inside the apartment, Eliot introduced him to two new people: Nate and Sophie. Jacob had been expecting this, had heard the stories about them, but it was clear that his presence still surprised them. They'd obviously been told about him, but from their reactions they hadn't been expecting exactly him. Jacob wasn't sure if it was because they'd expected a rough cowboy or an art nerd academic, or if they were just surprised by how closely he resembled Eliot. Either way, they masked their surprise quickly and then Sophie was asking him his opinion of cubism and art deco styles. 

They chatted a little bit and ate some mini tarts Eliot had prepared because he wasn't sure how much food would be at the event and he didn't want anyone to go hungry. 

Parker looked elegant in a figure-hugging dress and Hardison was matching Eliot in a tux. Nate's suit was closer to Jacob's in style, but no one would be looking at him when he stood next to Sophie, whose dress was so tight and low cut as to distract anyone who even a hint of attraction to women. He wondered if that was the point, if she dressed like that to draw the eye so no one noticed what the rest of the crew were doing. Or even what her hands were doing. 

They set off for the event in two vehicles. Sophie and Nate took one while Jacob joined the others in a dark van that was apparently used for their mobile operations. Hardison and Parker climbed into the back while the brothers sat in the front, an opening letting them carry on a conversation. 

When Jacob asked for more details about the exhibit, Parker answered by talking about the security system, explaining about vibration sensors and weight sensors under the items, the camera positions and the rotation of the guards. 

"I hope you're not going to rob the place while I'm there," Jacob said. 

"We're not there to steal anything," Eliot reassured him. "Parker just likes security systems." 

"They've got a really good one. Motion sensors and infrared, and the temperature sensors look for anything abnormal in heat signature, so if you wrapped yourself in something cold to fool it, that would trigger the sensor too." She talked more about the specs of the systems and Jacob thought it was a pity that Ezekiel was scared of the Leverage crew because he and Parker would probably get along. 

They reached the gallery where the exhibit opening was taking place and Eliot parked the van a little way from the entrance. They rejoined Nate and Sophie, who handed round the invitations, and then they went inside. Sophie was immediately greeted by an old lady in extremely sparkly diamond jewellery. The lady called her Elizabeth, which no one batted an eyelid at, and Sophie responded like they were old friends, offering sympathies. From the bits of conversation, it seemed that Sophie had known this woman's husband who had recently died, donating his entire art collection to this gallery. That was how Sophie had acquired the invitations. 

There was something familiar about the names. Sophie introduced the woman as Edith Mayer and Edith kept talking about dear Tommy. Jacob knew he'd never met this woman before, but the name Thomas Mayer rang a bell. Jacob puzzled over it, but was quickly distracted by the sight of Eve out of the corner of his eye. She gave him a little nod, which he returned, moving his head barely perceptibly. His sign that the apartment would be empty and that Eve should tell the others to proceed with the heist for the old Nate painting. 

Jacob half expected Hardison to suddenly get a buzz on his phone and know that the apartment was being robbed, but there was no sign of that. When Edith left them to the gallery, he grabbed some drinks for himself and Parker before heading inside. Jacob wandered in after them, looking at the paintings hung on walls and the labyrinth of free-standing partitions. It was an eclectic collection, with no unifying theme or style. It seemed the man had simply collected whatever art he had liked, which Jacob could appreciate. There were some nice works here, though not many by names that would mean much outside of the art world. There was a painting that appeared to be by Gerrit Dou, who had been a student of Rembrandt, and a few others were clearly inspired by great masters, though not by the masters themselves. 

Sophie handed him a glass of champagne from one of the servers and came to stand beside him as he admired a landscape that had some interesting composition and framing, using branches and flowers in vivid shades in the foreground to surround a pale and distant hillside and a figure on horseback that would be barely noticeable except for the way that the leaves and stems seemed to be pointing to him. 

Jacob hadn't come across this artist before but he would definitely look them up later. He could feel a paper on composition brewing in the back of his mind. 

"I really like the use of colour in this one," Sophie said. "The figure in the background is less vivid, less solid than the bright flowers of the foreground." 

"Like the figure on the horse is a daydream but the twigs and thorns are the reality." 

They discussed the painting some more, with Sophie noticing little details in design, and Jacob could almost forget that right now some of his friends were about to steal from his brother, and from a group of criminals even Eve Baird was afraid of. He pushed those thoughts aside, not wanting to do anything suspicious and immersed himself in the conversation with Sophie. They walked around the gallery, Sophie asking him his opinions and offering her own. She was very knowledgeable, and Jacob didn't feel bad about leaving Eliot to wander behind them in almost silence as they talked because he was enjoying the conversation so much. They talked about textures and composition, the qualities of light and colour. Jacob found himself delighted as being able to have these conversation out loud and know he wasn't going to be judged for it. 

Then he rounded the corner and saw it. He remembered why he knew the name Thomas Mayer. There was a painting of a scene of dancers hanging in a prominent position. A little card beside the piece stated that there were claims that the piece was by Degas but that the authenticity of the work was in question. 

"There's no question about the authenticity," Jacob said. "That's a fake." 

"You can tell with one glance?" Eliot asked. He'd been drifting along behind Jacob and Sophie for a while now but this was the first time he'd spoken in some time. 

"I examined it," Jacob said. "It's a good fake, but the brushstroke technique wasn't genuine and it's been artificially aged." 

"You didn't do the examination," Sophie said. "It was examined by Dr Ethan Cranmore." 

"That's one of my aliases." Jacob was really confused as to how she knew that name and the history of the painting, at least until the look of anger rose on her features. 

"You cost me about eight million dollars!" 

"What? I've never even met you before tonight." 

"And you didn't even need to look at the painting in person to ruin a con I'd been setting up for two years." Her volume was low, her words an angry hiss that wouldn't draw the attention of the other attendees of the event, but it was enough for Jacob to take a step back. She raised the purse she clutched in one hand and whacked him lightly on the chest with it. 

"I was just asked to consult on a painting." 

"Two years, I'd been setting things up. I had a partner who went in to sell a fake Rembrandt and I showed up and exposed it as a fake, earning Tommy's trust. I got talking to him about art and met him for drinks whenever I was in town to see his collection. Six months later, I had someone else try to sell him a fake. I convinced him that while it wasn't a real it might have been by a student and still quite valuable and so he argued the seller down because it wasn't genuine but he still thought he got a bargain because of me. Then I bring him the Degas, all excited because I think I've found him a genuine piece, and he's just about to sign on the dotted line when his daughter decides to get a second opinion from some reclusive academic who didn't even come inspect the painting in person. I was lucky I was able to convince Tommy that I was the one who'd been conned. I was distraught that I'd spent so much money on a fake and he bought the painting off me in sympathy for what I said I'd paid for it." 

"So you still conned an old man out of money." Jacob could now see why his colleagues thought these people were evil criminals. 

"Not nearly enough money." She must have caught his expression because she continued, "Oh, don't feel bad for Tommy. He owned three factories that worked people half to death while paying them so little most of his workers were still on food stamps, all while claiming that the chemical fumes weren't giving them cancer. Eight million would have been pocket change to him and he didn't deserve to keep it." 

It was hard to believe she'd been so friendly with the man's widow earlier in the evening. The person he was seeing now, annoyed at not managing to scam someone out of millions, was a very different face from the family friend offering condolences. Even if she meant what she said about the man's factories, even if he really had been an awful person, there was something deeply disconcerting about this shift. 

"Jake was just doing his job," Eliot pointed out. 

"Thank you," Jacob said. "Exactly. I was asked to say whether a piece was genuine or not and I gave my findings. Academic honesty is important to me." 

He wasn't going to start lying on forgery assessments because his brother was apparently deeply involved with criminals. 

"I suppose I can let it go," Sophie said. She slipped a hand through his arm. "Come on, let's see what you think of the fake Rembrandt." 

And just like that the subject was apparently dropped, but even as he tried to get back into discussing the artistic merits of the various pieces of work on the walls, he couldn't help thinking about Sophie's two faces and about the fact she'd played a fake identity to con money out of an old couple. And perhaps Jacob couldn't be too judgemental about the fact that she used false names, and maybe stealing from exploitative millionaires wasn't so bad in the grand scheme of things, but he couldn't help thinking how easy it would be to justify bad things when done against bad people. 

He didn't like the slippery slope argument, but he still wondered how far down that slope his brother had slipped. What terrible things had Eliot done that he'd found some way to justify to himself? Jacob started to wish he'd read the file Ezekiel had given him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is not really related to the fic, but if anyone wants to know more about my writing, I will be doing a talk at Trowbridge Town Hall in Wiltshire on 21st March at 2pm. I'll be talking about writing in general, my books, getting published, doing some readings of my work and things like that. The event is free entry. 
> 
> If anyone is in that area, please do come along.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To everyone reading this, I hope you're well and safe right now. I hope that your lives haven't been disrupted too badly by everything that's going on right now.

They went back to the apartment above the brew pub after the gallery closed. Jacob hadn't been able to recapture the enjoyment he'd felt early on. The fact that these people were criminals stood stack in his mind now and wouldn't be ignored. It certainly hadn't been helped by Parker, when she and Hardison rejoined them, talking more about the security system than the paintings. It had seemed almost amusing on the drive over, but now it was a reminder of how differently these people saw the world. But he went back anyway, partly because he needed to know what had happened here, whether Ezekiel and the others had been successful. 

In the apartment, Eliot got drinks out of the fridge, offering bottles of beer and opening a bottle of wine for Sophie to have some. Hardison made a comment about visiting the little boy's room and headed down the corridor from the main living area. A moment later he called out, "Guys!" 

They hurried towards him. Jacob lingered towards the back, heart pounding. 

"It's gone! Old Nate's gone." 

"What?" That was Parker, looking at the wall in bewilderment. 

"Did one of you move it?" Hardison looked worried, looking from one to the other, eyes resting on Nate longer than the rest, but finding only shaken heads. 

"Has someone broken in?" Parker sounded offended. "That's not fair. People can't rob us." 

"I should have got a security alert," Hardison said. "The moment someone breached the perimeter, I should have known." 

He hurried over to one of the big screens, the one behind the big desk thing, not the one with the couch. He had his phone out, tapping away, and the screen sprang into life before he got there. Images appeared, video feeds from the apartment and the brew pub, as well as the street outside. He ran them backwards until he found the moment when a masked figure in black emerged from a doorway in that corridor, grabbed the painting, glared at the blank wall behind it for a moment, and then disappeared back through the door it had come from, with only a flash of light to mark its disappearance. 

"That's not possible," Hardison said. 

"Someone jammed the perimeter alarms?" Nate asked. 

"They didn't even trigger the perimeter alarms, but that's not the impossible part. Look, they came through the door from the gym but this is the gym camera for that time. There's no way they could get to that door without being caught on camera." 

"They doctored the footage?" Parker said. 

"Then why miss one camera?" Nate asked. "If whoever did this has the technical skills to not only get past the perimeter alarms but also avoid being recorded by the other cameras, why didn't they alter the footage on that one?" 

"To send a message?" Eliot asked. 

"The missing painting is already a message," Sophie said. "Parker has trinkets in her dresser worth more than that painting, even including Hardison's emergency money stash in the back. They didn't steal the most valuable thing they could find. They stole something symbolic." 

"I should go," Jacob said. He didn't want to give away more than necessary until he had a chance to talk to Jenkins and find out what was really going on with the painting. "You've obviously got a lot to think about." 

Sophie narrowed her eyes slightly at him. Hardison was too busy looking at lines of code to even look up as he muttered about how there was no sign of the intrusion into his security software. 

"Whoever took the painting might still be out there, or watching this place," Eliot said. "It might not be safe." 

"I'll be fine. I'm just going to go home." 

"I could drive you," Eliot offered, "make sure you get there safe." 

"You've got plenty to deal with here. I wouldn't want to put you to any trouble and I'm sure there's no danger." Jake knew there wasn't any danger, but it was hard to explain that without admitting he knew exactly what had happened to the painting. 

"At least let me give you comms," Eliot said. He pulled open a drawer built into the base of the big desk and pulled out a small plastic box. Inside were some small objects that looked like drops of transparent plastic. Jake took one when Eliot held the box to him, feeling the slightly texture between his fingers. 

"If you put it in your ear, it'll activate it," Eliot said. "It'll let us hear what's going on around you. If there is trouble, I can come and help you." 

It was clear that Eliot wasn't going to let the subject drop. If he didn't agree to this, Eliot might insist on driving him home and it would be hard to explain why he was going to a doorway under a bridge. Eliot was obviously upset about having his safe space violated like this, which was understandable, so Jake could humour him a little if it made him feel better. It wouldn't make up for the fake that Jake was responsible for his current upset, but it was something. 

"So I just put it in to turn it on and take it out when I want privacy again and that'll turn it off?" he said. 

"Precisely," said Hardison. "It works by picking up vibrations in the inner ear and jaw so it'll pick up anything you say or anything said near you and transmit it back here. The pressure from it being in the ear acts as an on/off switch. As long as it's in, we'll be able to hear anything you say. Say the word if you need help." 

"I'm sure I won't," Jake said, but he put it into his ear anyway. It was a barely noticeable pressure inside the ear canal. 

"I'll speak to you soon," he said to Eliot. "I hope you get all this sorted out soon." 

He headed out before he said or did anything that gave him away, aware of the pressure of the comms transmitter in his ear. He would have to remember to take it out before he spoke to the other Librarians. He wasn't sure that the thing would be able to transmit from within the annex, given all the multi-dimensional weirdness that surrounded the Library, but he wasn't going to risk it. Not until he had a clearer idea of what was going on with the painting at any rate. 

"Can you hear me?" he asked experimentally. There was a faint sound in his ear, the start of background noise that hadn't been there a moment before and then Eliot said, "Yes, we can. Is anything wrong?" 

"Nothing. I just wanted to make sure it was working. I'm just at my car." 

The sound cut off again. Presumably they'd put him on mute so that he didn't have to hear their conversations while he drove. 

He drove back to the annex, feeling somewhat awkward about the fact that Eliot and his friends could hear what was going on around him. He didn't even turn on the radio because it felt weird to subject them to the background noise while they were presumably busy figuring out how someone had got into their apartment. In this strange awkwardness, the drive seemed twice as long as it should have been, even though the traffic was quiet at this time of night and this was probably the fastest he'd made the journey in real time. He was glad to arrive. 

Jacob parked his car and switched off the engine. 

"No sign of any trouble," he said to the empty air. "Nothing for you to worry about. I'll see you soon. Night." 

"Goodnight," Eliot said in his ear. "Call me if anything changes." 

"I will." 

He pulled the mini earpiece out. After a moment's consideration, he put it in the glove compartment of his car, just in case it was still transmitting. He didn't think Eliot had lied, but he couldn't tell from looking at the thing whether it was on or off and he didn't want to take the risk. Leaving the transmitter behind, he headed into the annex. 

Inside, he found the others gathered around the big table in the annex's main room, the portrait lying between them. 

"What did you find?" Jacob asked. 

"Well, it is the painting," Ezekiel said. He sounded disappointed at that. 

"You were right in your speculations," Jenkins said. "The spell is the Binding Protection from the Wissenthrow Manuscript." 

"That what manuscript?" 

"In the sixteenth century, a man named Joseph Wissenthrow compiled a book of spells and folk customs. Some were nonsense, some were primitive medicine and herbcraft, but there were a few genuine spells mixed in there. He distributed several copies of the book but because the spells contained within were of limited power, recovering them all was never a high priority for the Library. Then, a few years ago, someone scanned a copy into a computer and made it available on the internet." 

"It's available as an e-book on Project Gutenberg," Ezekiel added. 

While Jacob was in general in favour of preserving older books electronically and in making them available for free to the world, he could see why this would be a problem for books of magic. 

"So anyone could just get hold of this book?" he asked. 

"Not anymore," Ezekiel grinned. 

Jacob wasn't sure he liked the idea of the hacker removing books from that site, but he supposed it was no different from them hiding away other sources of magical knowledge. 

"It looks like this Hardison came across the book and decided to try out one of the spells," Jenkins said. "There are symbols of linking and protection painted onto the canvas, below the portrait. The frame and backing are thankfully not connected to the spell." 

"Why thankfully?" 

"Because someone has used this painting as a hiding place for large quantities of money. And because at some point someone damaged the back of the frame, either to put the money there or to take out a previous stash." 

Jacob thought of what he knew of spells that linked a symbolic object to people or things. 

"What will happen if the painting itself gets damaged?" he asked, already afraid to know what the answer might be. 

"Nothing good," Jenkins answered. "The backlash from the broken spell would bounce back onto the subjects of the protection magic, probably dealing the equivalent of all the damage it's protected them from in a single blow." 

It might not be enough to kill them, but it might and it could definitely do serious damage. Even a low level protection spell could build up power over the length of time it had been active, and from what Hardison and the others had said, the painting had been created years ago. The painting had acted like a dam, sheltering them from a trickle of harm, but that trickle had built up into a lake, held back by the magic. If the dam broke, it could obliterate them.


	13. Chapter 13

"Do you think Hardison knows?" Jacob asked. Hardison had been upset about the painting being missing, but he'd seemed more distressed about someone breaking through their security systems than the risk of the painting being used to harm them. He hadn't seemed too worried either when he'd talked about how the painting had nearly been destroyed in an explosion. If he knew, surely he would have locked the thing away in a vault somewhere. 

An act of clumsiness or maliciousness could do a lot of damage with that simple painting. 

"It's quite likely he has no idea," Jenkins said. "The manuscript included almost no mention of the dangers of magic, except for a vague warning of the power of three times three, the backlash that can occur when magic is used for malicious purposes. The description of the spell in question certainly includes no references to the potential for danger should the spelled object be destroyed." 

So Hardison had been sitting on a lethal weapon and had never known. 

"Can you undo the spell without the backlash?" Jacob asked. 

"Perhaps. Or contain the painting in some way so that it could be destroyed without the backlash being able to reach its targets." 

"Is it really our job?" Ezekiel said. "We could put the painting back and let them take their chances." 

"They don't know it's dangerous. That would be like removing a venomous snake from their home and then putting it back." It wasn't quite like that, because at the moment the snake was protecting them from threats, but was the protection worth it when the longer it operated, the worse the backlash would be should anything go wrong? 

Perhaps they could keep the painting in the Library somewhere, lock it away to keep it safe where no one could damage it. But, much though Jacob knew the Library to be protected, he also knew the Library wasn't impenetrable. Too many enemies had invaded this place, from the Serpent Brotherhood to DOSA. Even the safest vault in this place couldn't be guaranteed to be safe. 

But if they did destroy the painting, even safely, was that the right choice either? They might have grown used to the protection it offered, taking risks because experience had taught them the risks would pay off. If the painting was gone then they might lose an edge they relied on to keep them alive. 

Jacob might not like what he'd seen of Sophie, might have his doubts about his brother's past, but he wasn't ready to condemn them to death. 

"Containing magical artefacts that might pose a threat is the Library's purpose," Jenkins said. "Safely destroying this painting would be part of that duty. It will take some time for me to determine the appropriate containment measures but then I will do what is necessary to render the painting inert." 

"Do it," Eve agreed. "We don't want magic in the hands of people like that." 

"I'll help with researching the containment," Cassandra offered. 

"I should warn them," Jacob said. 

"If we do this properly," Jenkins said, "there should be no need to warn them. We will be able to break the magic without them feeling any effects." 

"I should still warn them not to take any major risks. They should know what the painting was doing and that it won't be doing it anymore." 

"I don't think that's a good idea," Eve said. "Right now, they have no idea that you were involved in stealing the painting. If they find out, they might not take kindly to it." 

"Trust me, mate, no thief likes to know they've been robbed," Ezekiel put in. 

"Is that speaking from experience?" 

Ezekiel pulled a face. "Of course not. No one would dare steal from the great, Ezekiel Jones. I speak from experience of stealing from other thieves. If you go to them and tell them you stole something personal from them, they could hurt you." 

"Eliot wouldn't hurt me." 

"Did you even read the file I gave you?" 

Jacob looked away. His silence was answer enough for Ezekiel, whose voice rose to a near shout. "Seriously? I hand you evidence that your brother is a monster and you don't even look at it? I found you that stuff to warn you, to protect you, but you'd rather stick your head in the sand. Eliot Spencer is a brutal killer and that's just from the stuff we know about. The truth is probably much, much worse." 

"He's still my brother!" 

"I'm with Jones on this," Eve told him. "Spencer is dangerous. Even if he's personally not dangerous to you, you don't know what the others in his team might be capable of. It's not worth taking the risk. We find a way to safely destroy the painting and that's it. That's the end of this. It would be safest if you limit your interactions with Spencer as much as possible." 

Jacob knew that what she was advocating was the safest option, but he also knew that Eliot wouldn't so easily let this relationship fade away now that they'd reconnected. He knew that, because he didn't think he could either. He could understand Eve's point of view, but he couldn't let Eliot be vulnerable out there without trying to warn him at least. Maybe Eliot wouldn't believe him. Maybe anything he said would be pointless. 

Maybe Eve and Ezekiel would be proven right and Eliot would show his dark side once he realised Jacob had deceived him. 

He didn't want to consider that possibility, but the thought intruded in his mind anyway. Even if that happened, at least then he would know. He would trust Eliot with the truth. What happened next would happen. One way or another. 

\--- 

Jacob went deeper into the Library, ostensibly to spend some time alone with his thoughts, but he also used the time to seek out a book. The Library had a copy of the Wissenthrow manuscript, of course, more than one. It was easy for Jacob to get hold of one. It was also easy to get hold of a primer on the dangerous of magic when used carelessly. There was a whole section in there about magical backlashes. Jenkins had made them all read it early on in their tenure as Librarians to warn them of the dangers of meddling with arcane powers. 

Jacob skimmed through it again now until he found the section on the risks of breaking magical objects and the release of power that could follow. He didn't know if it would be enough to convince Eliot, if he would believe him at all about magic even existing, but it would have to do. He would show Eliot the books and explain about the painting. He hoped it would be enough. 

Even if Eliot didn't believe him, he would have done something. He'd have tried. 

At this point, that was all he could do. 

Jacob pulled his phone out and quickly sent Eliot a text message, aware of the late hour. It was likely that Eliot was still awake, trying to figure out about the break-in. Jacob owed it to him to reassure him on that front too, to let him know that there weren't enemies invading his home. Jacob took a breath and typed out a quick text message. 

_Can we meet tomorrow? There's something I need to tell you._


	14. Chapter 14

Jacob asked to meet away from the brew pub, and away from the Library too. He wanted to talk to Eliot in private. He snuck out of the annex early, hoping no one would notice him leaving, and headed for the park where he'd arranged over text to meet with Eliot. It would be quiet enough this early in the day, and the few joggers and dog-walkers around would be unlikely to care about two brothers meeting up to talk. 

Jacob got there early, the books carefully wrapped and packed into a backpack because he hadn't wanted to risk them getting damaged in case it started to rain. He found a bench and sat down to wait, hugging the backpack on his lap. 

Jacob had barely been sitting there for a minute when Eliot strode up. He sat down beside him on the bench. 

“Hey.” 

“Hey.” 

Awkward silence stretched painfully between them. 

“You were the one who said you had things to talk about,” Eliot pointed out when the silence had dragged on too long. 

“I know.” Despite having spent hours last night lying awake trying to plan for this conversation, Jacob wasn’t sure where to start, how to broach a subject that was bound to be met with disbelief. 

“Is this about the fact you were involved in stealing the painting?” Eliot asked. 

Jacob jerked, twisting to stare at his brother in shock. “How did you know?” 

Eliot grimaced. “I didn’t. I was hoping Sophie was wrong. She said you were hiding something when you insisted on leaving right away after the exhibit and thought you knew something about the painting. She's good at reading people.” 

Jacob wasn’t sure he liked the idea of someone who’d known him only a few hours being that good at reading him. 

“Hardison’s got a lot of questions about the how of it,” Eliot continued. “He’s figured out how your associate blocked his security system from sending alerts to his phone and he’s already redesigning his setup around it, but he can’t figure out how the camera footage was doctored and it’s driving him crazy.” 

“No one doctored the footage,” Jacob said. “My… associate as you put it got into the apartment using a magic door.” 

“Well, that’s a new one. Don’t worry, I won’t push you on it, Hardison will figure it out eventually.” 

Jacob frowned at him. “I say ‘magic door’ and you’re just going to drop the subject?” 

“I won’t ask about the how if you can’t or don’t want to tell me, but I do want to know the why. Why steal from me? And why that painting? Was it your choice or is someone forcing you into this?” 

“Forcing me?” Jacob hadn’t considered that someone might think he was being coerced into anything. 

“I wasn’t sure if the ex-NATO shadow following us around the gallery was there to make sure you did what you were told.” 

Jacob blinked at him, surprised for multiple reasons. Eliot hadn’t given any indication that he’d noticed being watched at the gallery. Jacob had barely noticed Eve and he'd known she was there. 

“How did you know she was ex-NATO?” Jacob asked. It probably wasn’t the most important question, but if he’d managed to identify Eve, she wouldn’t be happy. 

“She has a very distinctive way of observing crowded spaces.” 

Jacob decided not to argue. He didn’t know how anyone could identify someone’s career history from that, but then he couldn’t always explain how he could identify an artist’s brush strokes in a genuine work. Some things came with enough experience that recognition could happen at an almost unconscious level. 

“So you knew about your shadow?” Eliot asked. 

“She was worried about me, or more accurately, worried about you. She knows you by reputation from when you worked with Damian Moreau.” 

It was like a shutter came down on Eliot’s face, his calm expression changing to something colder, harder, like a mask had settled underneath his skin. A passing observer might have still mistaken him for calm, but there was a tension there too. 

“Did she tell you what I did for Moreau?” Eliot asked. His tone was blank, empty of emotion. It was almost frightening to hear it. 

“A little.” 

Eliot nodded. “Whatever she has planned, whatever you’re going to do to me, leave the team out of this. They’re not like me. They don’t… they’re good people.” 

“What?” The burst out of him in confusion before he understood. Eliot thought that Jacob was working for someone who wanted to hurt him or take him down or bring him to justice for past actions. Eliot thought Jacob had betrayed him and he’d just… accepted it. Because he thought he wasn’t good people. Because he thought he was a monster. 

“I’m not planning anything against you!” Jacob snapped. 

“Then why steal the painting?” 

“Because it’s dangerous!” 

“It’s a painting.” Eliot’s eerily calm mask dropped for an instant to allow confusion to show through. 

Jacob dug into his bag and pull out one of the books. 

“This is a book called the Wissenthrow manuscript. Someone scanned a copy of it and made it available for free as an e-book. It’s a book on spells and magical rituals. Most of them are superstitious nonsense but one of the spells,” Jacob had a bookmark to note the page and he turned to it now, “is a spell of binding and protection. It symbolically links a physical object to a person or group of people and then it protects them. It’s not a very strong protective charm, but it can skew odds in your favour, give you an edge.” 

“You’re talking about magic spells as though they’re a real thing.” Eliot was back to looking calm, the mask fully in place. He must have decided Jacob was trying to lie to him. 

“Magic is real and someone, presumably Hardison, did that spell on the painting.” 

“Damn it, Hardison!” Eliot snapped, and Jacob thought it was a general expression of frustration at the man for playing with magic, but he continued with, “Watch your volume!” 

Eliot winced a little, head jerking to one side, as though to escape a loud noise. 

“Is he on comms with you right now?” Jacob asked. 

“Yes, and for some reason he’s yelling Library and Librarian into my ear. Care to explain?” 

“The Library protects people from the more dangerous effects of magic and stores some powerful magical artefacts where they can’t do any harm.” 

“You expect me to believe you’re a magical Librarian?” 

“I don’t expect you to believe it, but it’s the truth. I work for the Library and we deal with dangerous magic. On a recent mission, I drank a potion which gave me a vision, a vision of you talking to Hardison. That was how I found out you were alive. When I was in your apartment, I realised that the painting was magical and I asked my team to take it back to the Library to test it. They figured out it was the protection spell from the manuscript.” 

“Okay, let’s say, hypothetically, that I accept your premise. Why would a protection spell be dangerous?” 

"Because you said the painting almost got blown up. That painting is linked through magic to you." 

"You're saying it's like a painting voodoo doll?" 

Jacob decided that this wasn't the time to talk about the history of voodoo and its misrepresentation in pop culture. He understood what Eliot was referring to and that was more important than correcting him on his understanding of magic. 

"A bit like that, yes," he said instead. "The painting has been shielding you from harm, only in a minor way, but it's been doing it for years. If the painting is damaged, unless we do things carefully, you'll all be hit by a magical backlash equivalent to several years' worth of negative energy. At a minimum." 

"All the more reason for us to get the painting back then," Eliot said. "We can protect it." 

"My team are going to break the spell on it in a controlled way, in a way that won't cause the backlash. You'll lose the protection it was providing but you won't get hit by the damage. It's the best way. Better than having magical items in the hands of people who don't know enough about them to know the risks." 

"You really believe all this, don't you?" Eliot asked. 

"Yes. I'll admit it took me a little while to get used to it, but it's real." 

"Can you show me some magic to prove it?" 

"We don't do magic, not like that. Occasionally we'll use magical items where we know the risks and effects, but magic's too dangerous to just throw around." 

"How convenient." 

Eliot's gaze was fixed on Jacob, hard and serious. The mask on his emotions hadn't gone away entirely. 

"You don't believe me," Jacob said. 

"You're talking about magic spells. Of course I don't believe it. It sounds like something out of Hardison's online games. What I can't figure out is why you're playing this angle, why you're making up something so absurd." 

"I'm telling you the truth. Ask Hardison. He can hear what we're saying, right? Was I right about the spell he did on the painting?" 

Eliot was quiet for several long moments and Jacob wished he could hear whatever was being said into his ear. He wished he'd brought the earpiece he'd been given. 

"Hardison says to ask you about DOSA," Eliot said. 

Jacob suspected he was being tested. "Department of Statistical Anomalies. A government department whose job it is to investigate strange phenomenon and areas of suspected magical activity. We've had some disagreements about jurisdiction in the past. How does Hardison know about them?" 

Eliot's mask faltered for a moment to allow a slight, fond smile to show through. "He says he's been hacking their servers to give himself a challenge and keep his skills sharp." 

"They'll have a file on me and probably a whole bunch that talk about the Library. That'll prove what I'm saying is true." 

"So what now?" Eliot asked. 

"I go back to the Library. We break the spell on the painting. If the painting comes through intact, I'll bring it back to you, and you keep Hardison from messing around with spells in the future." 

"But you know about Moreau. You're just going to ignore that?" 

"I don't know what to do about that. I don't know what to _think_ about that. Do I like the fact that you used to kill people for a major criminal? No. But I can't change it anymore than you can. The past is the past and right now you say you're helping people. Whether that's enough is between you and your conscience." 

"Thank you," Eliot said. 

Jacob wasn't sure anything he'd said was worth thanking him over but the fact that Eliot thought it was probably said something. Eliot had believed Jacob had betrayed him and he was still alright about it because he believed he deserved it. The weight of whatever lay in that dark past rested heavy on Eliot's conscience. 

Jacob was still hunting for the right words to say next when Eliot stiffened. 

"We've got company."


	15. Chapter 15

Jacob looked past Eliot and saw a familiar figure. Eve wasn't exactly hiding, but she was positioned so that a clump of bushes was between her and the two brothers on the bench. Jacob wasn't sure how Eliot had known she was there given how she had positioned herself behind his back. Maybe Eliot's team were watching the park on surveillance and had spotted her. That was a more comfortable idea than that Eliot was able to notice someone behind him who wasn't making any noise Jacob had been able to hear. Because if Eliot could do that, it said worrying thoughts about how deeply entrenched in him were survival instincts. 

Those sort of skills didn't come from a happy life. 

"It's okay," Jacob said. He wasn't sure which of them he was saying it to. He looked between them. Eve, knowing she'd been spotted, emerged from behind the bushes. Her gun was in her hand. 

Eliot turned where he sat, eyes flicking to the gun then up to Eve's face. He didn't stand or reach for a weapon of his own, but he watched her cautiously. Eve, for her part, kept her distance, not getting close enough that Eliot might get the gun from her. 

Jacob reached out and took the book back from Eliot, slipping it into his bag. 

"Look, I've said what I needed to say. I'll let you know about the painting when I have more information. For now, I think I should just leave before things get messy." 

"See you around, Jake," Eliot said, not taking his eyes off Eve. 

"Count on it." 

Jacob stood. He walked over to Eve. She moved as he approached, making sure she kept a clear line of sight on Eliot. Jacob put a hand on her arm, not reaching for the gun but hoping to offer reassurance. 

"It's okay," he said. "Let's go back." 

He started walking, keeping his hand on her arm, guiding her away. Eve moved with him but she didn't turn her back on Eliot, not until they had put a good deal more distance between them. They set a brisk pace away from the park. There was no sign of how Eve had come here, so most likely she'd used the Library's back door, but Jacob had a more mundane means of transport waiting for him so he headed there now. 

Only when they had reached Jacob's car, parked a block away from the park, did Eve speak to him. 

"That was a really stupid thing to do." 

"I wasn't in any danger." 

"I know you think you can trust him but-" 

"No. You don't get to tell me whether I can or can't trust him. He thought I'd betrayed him. He thought I'd sold him out and was working against him because I knew about his past and the only thing he did was ask me keep his friends out of it. To keep them safe." 

That had the opposite effect on Eve to the one he'd intended. She looked horrified. "If he thinks you've betrayed him... Stone, we need to keep you away from him. Just because he didn't make a move in a public park doesn't mean he won't come after you." 

"When will you understand, he's not a threat to me? I'm not going to deny that he's done bad things. Hell, he's not denying that he's done bad things, but that doesn't mean he'll do them to me, and I sincerely believe he regrets what he did do in the past." 

"People don't become good people overnight if they've done the things he's done." 

"Maybe it wasn't overnight. Maybe he had some world-shaking event that changed his mind and made him decide to do better. Maybe he's spent years getting psychological help. Maybe he's had a slow journey to self-improvement. I don't know and you don't know. You're judging a man you've never met." 

"I'm judging him on his criminal record. You want to believe he's still the guy you knew when you were kids. You playing a very dangerous game every time you get close to him, and telling him that you stole from him is just a terrible idea in general. At least tell me he doesn't know where you live." 

"He doesn't know where I live." 

"Good. Otherwise I'd be telling you to sleep at the Library from now on." 

Jacob spent most of his nights there anyway, but he didn't appreciate Eve acting like she could give out orders like that. Yes, she was his Guardian and it was her job to protect him, but she was treating him like a toddler who didn't understand that touching the stove would hurt. She trusted his judgement when they were in the field but she seemed determined to believe that he was incapable of rendering sound judgement when it came to Eliot. 

As they drove back to the Library, Eve asked how much he'd told him and Jacob was forced to admit that he'd told Eliot about magic and their plans with the painting. 

"He deserved a warning," Jacob said. 

"Now that you've given it to him, you've fulfilled your fraternal duty. Now will you please listen to me and stay away from him?" 

"I'm an adult, Eve. You might not agree with my decisions but it's my choice." 

"Cassandra's right. We're never going to settle this argument, are we?" 

"Not until one of us gets proof we're right." 

"My problem with that is that the proof I'm right will be your dead body. Assuming your body is ever found, which isn't guaranteed with Spencer." 

\----

Back in the Library, the others were already at work on the painting. Jenkins had set up a binding circle on the floor around it, with symbols in four different alphabets denoting the spell that would keep any negative energy bound until it could be safely dissipated. Several crystals inside the circle would act as temporary reservoirs for the magical energy. Between the circle and the crystals, none of the backlash ought to spill out and hit Eliot or the others. The crystals would contain the majority of the energy of that backlash for a time, but they could be dropped into a deep pit until that energy leaked out of them, like radioactive material breaking down but thankfully with a much more manageable half life. 

Jenkins had even found a metal box engraved with symbols to provide some extra shielding around the crystals while the magic broke down. 

Jacob listened carefully to all the details as Jenkins explained them and it sounded like Jenkins was confident this would work safely. 

"Is the energy from the crystals going to flow back towards Eliot and his team?" Jacob asked. 

"No. Once it's released from the painting, it won't have any direction to it. It will seep out into the general area near to the crystals, but we can contain that well enough in the Library." 

So Eliot would be safe. Whatever happened next, whatever would occur with their relationship, Eliot would be safe from the careless use of magic. That would have to be good enough. Jacob just hoped that Eliot would forgive him for this. He wasn't even sure if it was forgiveness he needed. The sad and resigned attitude to the apparent betrayal was worse than if Eliot had been angry at him. Maybe what Jacob wanted was for Eliot to forgive himself. 

It was hard to encourage that though when he didn't know exactly what it was Eliot had done. Jacob left Jenkins and the others to the final preparations of the ritual and slipped into the main Library to look for the folder Ezekiel had given him. He knew roughly where he'd left it so he headed to that reading nook, expecting to see the folder lying on the low table where he'd left it after he'd decided to let Eliot keep his secrets. But Eliot already thought Jacob knew about this stuff, so he didn't feel as bad about looking. He would just skim the file to get the rough gist of what Eliot had done. 

At least, he could if he could find the damn file. He was certain this was where he'd left it but there was no sign of the folder on the table, the chairs, or tucked onto the nearby shelves. 

"Is this what you're looking for?" asked a voice from overhead. 

Jacob jumped nearly out of his skin and spun around to see Parker dropping down from a perch on top of one of the sets of shelves. She had a tiara on her head, an amulet around her neck, and the file on Eliot's background in her hand.


End file.
